These two studies of Brazilian labor by São Paulo sociologists Simão and Rodrigues are key contributions in the growing literature on labor written by the group of scholars who have graduated from the faculty of Sociology of the University of São Paulo. The other book-length study of this type is Leôncio Martins Rodrigues, Conflicto industrial e sindicalismo no Brasil (São Paulo: Difusão Européia do Livro, 1966). Other members of the group of São Paulo sociologists who have dealt seriously with labor in works devoted to industrialization, populism, and economic development include Octavio Ianni, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and Francisco Weffort. Under the inspiration of Florestan Fernandes and the influence of French sociology, particularly that of the French labor sociologist Alaine Touraine, these writers are making the most serious studies of Brazilian labor to date and are beginning to fill the gap between the voluminous literature on Brazilian labor law and journalistic, polemical works on labor. Simão brings years of experience as a participant in the printers’ union to his study of labor. He became a sociologist later in life after he lost his sight. J. A. Rodrigues spent many years as the director of the Departamento Intersindical de Estatística e Estados Sócio-Econômicos in São Paulo, an economic research organization maintained by São Paulo labor unions, a rare instance of putting social science to work in the service of organized labor. Both authors combine considerable experience in the labor field with their sociology credentials, and they are the best-informed social scientists on Brazilian labor affairs.
Both books are comprehensive analyses of the labor movement. Both are historical in their approach, unlike most North American sociologists. Simão’s bibliography is heavy with such primary source material as union and anarchist periodicals from the first three decades of this century. Whereas Simão’s study is explicitly limited to the State of São Paulo—something which should have been mentioned in the title—Rodrigues, despite a São Paulo perspective, turns his attention to the more industrialized areas in general. Both authors seem to be afraid to write frankly about politics after World War II; neither mentions João Goulart or any modern labor leader by name, and discussions of modern politics are discreet and anything but polemical.
Both studies begin at the end of the nineteenth century, but Simão ends his coverage in the 1940s, while Rodrigues brings the story of labor past the 1964 military take over. Both quite rightly see the 1930-45 Vargas period as a watershed in Brazilian labor-government relations. They contrast the ideological and organizational diversity, immigrant predominance, and independence of labor organizations before Vargas, with the conformity, control, uniformity, and bureaucratization of unions after the experience of the corporatíst Estado Novo (1937-1945). They agree that Brazilian union organization did not grow out of craft guilds, which were weak in Brazil and tended to disappear before the development of manufacturing at the beginning of the 20th century. Instead, the union organizations were imported from Europe by immigrants at the turn of the century. Each author combines a basically Marxist approach to class structure and the state with the over-use of European sociological concepts such as “marginality,” which obscure the issues and clash with their class-conflict assumptions.
Simão, whose wealth of data supports Rodrigues’ sharper analysis, points out that in the period before 1930, the anarcho-sindicalist positions were generally dominant. Political party activity and relations with government were to be avoided at all costs and, since winning salary demands only consolidated the capitalist system, strikes were seen primarily as practice in resistance or rehearsals for the big revolutionary strike. Simão contrasts this with the Socialist view that reformist struggles had a revolutionary meaning and with the Communist view that labor activity was complimentary to the fundamental activities of the party. Government and employers alike then regarded all strikes as illegal, to be forcefully repressed.
Simão describes how the state subsequently became a buffer between capital and labor, culminating in the regimentation of unions, but in setting up this machinery the government made strikes more political than ever. By regulating unions and having them cooperate with government, Vargas changed unions from organs of struggle into government agencies. Rodrigues goes on to describe the birth of the pelego, the labor boss who did the government’s and/or boss’ bidding. The labor courts handled labor relations, and police repression became, for a time, less necessary. Rodrigues believes that Vargas’ labor legislation essentially served the employers because it gave control over salaries to the government and it then held back salary demands more effectively than employers themselves could have done.
Yet the Brazilian working class was transformed culturally and politically after 1930 from a small immigrant group to a much larger native labor force of migrants from rural areas. Rodrigues concludes that workers lost their capacity to struggle in the 1930s because of paternalistic legislation, but does not explain how they regained their capacity to struggle in the late 1950s despite the existence of the same legislation. The answer lies in the delayed development of class consciousness on the part of rural workers combined with the distorted, dependent, and inflationary development of the Brazilian economy during that period.
Unions first became heavily involved in political campaigns for structural reform after the Vargas government took over responsibility for leading economic development and turned to labor groups to provide pressure to achieve reforms which were needed to develop the economy and private business. As industrialization developed after World War II, workers suffered from rampant inflation, and in the 1950s union leaders began to shift the struggle from wage increases to a struggle for basic reforms which would end the causes of inflation. Rodrigues considers that union participation in politics tended to become real and participatory after 1950, when unions were the major organizations to become involved in public campaigns in support of nationalism, industrialization, agrarian reform, and the organization of rural workers. They became much more independent of the government between 1960 and 1964, so that they began to manipulate the government rather than vice-versa. After the military took over in 1964, repression against radicals in labor was even more severe than it had been before 1930, but instead of being anti-union it was designed to maintain the union as an agent of the government.
The underlying question of both books—why has Brazilian labor not played a more revolutionary role—must be seen against a world situation. In recent years labor has nowhere taken a revolutionary role. The answers to that question are less to be found in specific Brazilian political and legal structures than the authors seem to realize. These are nevertheless important books on an important subject.
