Luiz Philippe Vieira de Mello, minister of the Superior Labor Court (TST), vehemently criticized the labor reform during a visit to Unicamp on Friday afternoon, defining the expectations it brought as mere daydreams. “The reform was transformative and had strong impacts on social law and labor law. The economy so far has not responded to anything that was promised. In my opinion, there is the deconstruction of a system that has been progressively established over 70 years, creating a protective perspective for Brazilian workers. Now we are in the individual sphere of employment contracts, with extrajudicial terminations, without preserving cogent labor standards.”
Vieira de Mello met with rector Marcelo Knobel to sign an agreement between Unicamp and the National School for Training and Improvement of Labor Magistrates (Enamat), of which he is director. The cooperation agreement provides training courses in the economic and labor areas for magistrates across the country. The minister then participated in the event “Reality after the implementation of labor reform and working conditions”, organized by Cesit (Center for Trade Union Studies and Labor Economics) of the Institute of Economics (IE), in which there was a debate and the launch of two books on the topic: “Labor Reform in Brazil: promises and realities” and “Work and Collective Action in Brazil: contradictions, impasses and perspectives”.
In addition to the worker's individual rights, the TST minister is now paying attention to the disintegration of collective rights and, above all, the crumbling of the Brazilian union system. “I think that a democracy without union participation, without a balance of interests between capital and labor, is not capable of producing good results. In fact, we are going to have an imposition of force on the most vulnerable and the most oppressed, in an extremely unequal country – our population is among the ten most unequal in the world, with a concentration of income in 1% of Brazilians, and I don't believe it that a country can be built with such economic fragility.”
According to Luiz Philippe Vieira de Mello, it is estimated that there was a 30% drop in the number of labor actions as a result of the restriction on employees' free access to justice, imposed by the reform, but he is of the opinion that extrajudicial agreements are even more offensive . “As jurisprudence is always changing, the access restriction ends up being resolved. However, when workers are allowed to make an agreement with someone, somewhere, without any control, it seems to me that we actually have a very serious problem.”
The judge takes a serious view of what would be an attempt to weaken or even end labor justice in Brazil, defining it as part of a project for the rise of capital from the perspective that, in a minimal State, free enterprise would not suffer any restrictions. “Capital has always needed the State. So, the speech is actually not about a minimal State, it is about a State just for capital. And not a regulatory State that also protects the most disadvantaged, those who really need state regulation to establish a minimum economy – I don't imagine that capitalism works without income circulation, I don't know who the consumers of this final product will be. ”
The director of Enamat notes that we have four branches of law in Brazil that, essential, must be protected: labor law, consumer law, environmental law and antitrust law. “Labor and consumer rights deal with the vulnerable; the environmental deals with what is essential for human life, which is the preservation of the environment; and antitrust law, to prevent mergers and monumental groups that take over the economy and end competition itself. For the country to have a promising future, these rights need to be guaranteed. This movement of flexibility, or “entrepreneurship” in quotation marks, will not make the economy circulate. I would like to be wrong, and if I am, I will gladly repent, but I don't see any chance of it working out.”
Course for magistrates
Unicamp will already offer a first course for more than 40 labor judges in Brazil, within the scope of the TRT of the 15th Region (Campinas), throughout the last week of November, here in IE – other courses are planned in regions of Brasília, São Paulo, Porto Alegre and Curitiba, among others. “The agreement consists of classes such as macroeconomics, economic development, the job market and the Brazilian economy”, explains professor Denis Maracci Gimenez, director of Cesit. “For next year, we are still going to design a more precise plan, but we want to go to the regions and also extend activities to research that helps judges understand what is happening in the economy and the job market.”
Denis Gimenez participated in the meeting to sign the cooperation agreement at the Rector's Office, together with Marcelo Knobel, the TST minister, judge Maria Inês Corrêa de Cerqueira César Targa (director of the TRT-15 Judicial School) and André Biancarelli (director -deputy who takes over as director of IE next week). “For Unicamp, it is an important agreement as it establishes a link with the TST and, more than that, because it is playing an important role in the national public debate, in addition to being part of the process of forming a high public career, which is fundamental for the country."
Minister Vieira de Mello considers that the agreement will be very useful as it offers important elements and information that could influence the Brazilian judiciary, which in his opinion needs a course correction. “We have an elitist judiciary. It is necessary to recruit judges across the country and bring representation of the Brazilian population into judicial decisions; so that the judiciary can see the other: the one it judges, the member of society who expects total justice, not just justice that decides cases, but that pacifies, reconciles, resolves conflicts and thus meets emotional, economic and social needs .”
Judge Maria Inês Targa recalls that she was a student on a course in the first partnership between the Institute of Economics and TRT-15, in 2001, and says she is extremely happy with the signing of the agreement between Unicamp and Enamat. “Over the last 15 years, studies in labor economics carried out in this house have changed the content and had a strong impact on the decisions of Labor judges, therefore leading to fairer, faster and more appropriate decisions for those under jurisdiction. The agreement is very good for carrying out these studies, which changed my career and my life. May this partnership bear many more fruits.”
Balance of the 1st year of the reform
Jose Dari Krein, professor at IE and researcher at Cesit, organized the event on November 27th in which “Reality after the implementation of the labor reform” was discussed, when two books were launched that are the result of joint work with the Public Ministry of Work. “Last year we held a national seminar in Brasília to take stock of the first year of the labor reform [of 2017]. From this seminar, we began to produce material that expressed the discussions held with the MP. The books come from the effort within Remir (Interdisciplinary Monitoring Studies Network), created to capture the impacts of reform in the world of work, collective action and the market.”
Labor Reform in Brazil: promises and reality is Remir's first publication, bringing together analyzes from professors and researchers from Brazilian institutions who focus on the topic. The general objective of the book is to provide the general public with information based on investigations carried out by members of the network: research based on secondary sources, with analysis and construction of indicators based on pre-existing data (such as RAIS, CAGED and the PNADC), and also from primary sources, with original production of information, such as interviews with workers and trade unionists.
The book was organized by José Dari Krein, Roberto Véras de Oliveira and Vitor Araújo Filgueiras, with the argument that the labor reform did not fulfill the promises that supported its implementation, specifically reducing unemployment and increasing formalization. Vitor Filgueiras already indicates in the first chapter, for example, that in the case of formalization, on the contrary, there is strong evidence that the reform has encouraged its reduction. On the other hand, Dari Krein and Roberto Véras, who jointly author two chapters, show that the resurgence of precariousness predominates and that legislative changes reinforce or create new modalities of hiring, remuneration and working time.
The second book, Work and collective action in Brazil: contradictions, impasses and perspectives (1978-2018), organized by Iram Jácome Rodrigues, recalls that 40 years have passed since the 1978 strikes and that following the strike that occurred at the Scania factory in São Bernardo do Campo, which began on May 12 of that year, the country witnessed the largest cycle of strikes in its history carried out by urban and rural workers. The collection addresses the developments of collective actions over these 40 years, the changes that have occurred within them (forms of struggle, organizational structures, institutionalization processes and relations with politics, economy and society). It also brings a reflection on the dilemmas of the union institution and workers' actions in this XNUMXst century.
Labor Reform in Brazil: promises and reality
José Dari Krein, Roberto Véras de Oliveira, Vitor Araújo Filgueiras (organizers)
Curt Nimuendajú Editor
Support: MPT – Public Ministry of Labor
Free Download:
http://www.cesit.net.br/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Livro-REMIR-v-site.pdf
Work and collective action in Brazil: contradictions, impasses, perspectives (1978-2018)
Iram Jácome Rodrigues (organizer)
Annablume Editor
Format: 16x23 cm, 430 pages
ISBN: 978-85-391-0949-4
Price: $ 64,00