A Economist Stela Cristina de Godoi delved into the universe of workers on the factory floor of automobile companies, from the period between 1954 and 1964, to understand the experiences and forms of worker resistance. Considered the “golden age” of the Brazilian economy due to its high growth rates, the moment holds some contradictions that the researcher decided to investigate through oral history and memory.

If, on the one hand, the industrialization and urbanization project of the mid-20th century became a reference with regard to economic development policies, media reports from this historical period also appear permeated by discourses of resistance. “I realized that there was a contradiction between official economic history and the workers’ experience. So, my initial proposal was to investigate the other side of this story.”

In her master's work in Sociology “The countryside and the steel: the experiences and worker resistance in modern Brazil (1954-1964)”, supervised by professor Ricardo Antunes, Stela analyzed the life stories of 14 former metalworkers from the metropolitan region from Sao Paulo. She found the existence of some traces of resistance that transcend the sphere of political activism, produced through unions and parties.

“There was an atmosphere of constant fear. Proof of this is that those occupying leadership positions were called overseers, probably showing an analogy to the period of slavery”, he explains. Work accidents were often caused by the lack of protective equipment, forced work patterns and fear of dismissal.

It was also possible to identify, in the study, that the monotony of work expresses aspects of estrangement and alienation present in this working-class experience. “In metallurgical work, within the capitalist mode of production, the worker experienced an anesthetic sensation as he spent the whole day making the same movements, always at the same time”, he explains.

On the assembly line, designed to exploit the physical and mental strength of workers, workers found themselves more directly affected by these “gears of the factory”. The metallurgical work carried out on the benches, where employees with a little more qualifications remained, the salary was higher and allowed, according to Stela, the fulfillment of one of the subjective needs of human work, the interference of individual skill in the production process.

Odd jobs – The learning process inside the workshops, according to the study, contained traces of resistance. “The more experienced ones, when 'passing the job' to the novice, also passed on the tricks, scams and small refusals, elaborated and improved in the work process”, he explains.

The term odd jobs were objects and artifacts produced with material from the factory itself and not work for financial gain as it is more commonly known. Odd jobs were done underground for the workers themselves, as in the case of a sissy, a type of support for a coffee strainer, produced by one of the interviewees. “It was an activity with a profound meaning, as it expressed, above all, an attempt to recreate the meaning of that strange work, based on the cultural amalgam of the rural and the urban”, he argues.