EThis book is not only the best reference today on the topic, but a document that should be paradigmatic for all collective work in scientific research”. The comment, made by sociologist Francisco de Oliveira for the “ear” of the book Wealth and Misery of Work in Brazil (Boitempo Editorial), summarizes the contribution and importance of the work for understanding the factors that transformed the job market, from of the 1990s, with the advent of productive restructuring.

The book is the result of collective research “Where is the world of work going? The different forms of productive restructuring in Brazil”, which was coordinated by sociologist Ricardo Antunes, professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH) at Unicamp. Funded by CNPq, the studies, which began in early 2000, will be further developed. The group comprises 12 doctoral students, five master's students and three undergraduates with scientific initiation scholarships, all from IFCH, in addition to ten professors from other universities.

“This is research guided by a certain way of conceiving the sociology of work, which refuses neutrality when dealing with the reality of manufacturing and services. In doing so, we hope to contribute to a better understanding of the particularity of recent capitalism in Brazil and the configuration assumed by the world of work, in which wealth and misery are present in a relational way, giving shape and content to our social formation”, writes Antunes in the introduction, then adding that “the prescriptions defined in the Washington Consensus triggered an enormous wave of deregulation in the most distinct spheres of the world of work”. Trade unionism is included in the scope of work.

This research effort is summarized in the book, which also includes articles authored by Hungarian philosopher István Mészáros and economist Marcio Pochmann, professor at the Unicamp Institute of Economics. The work brings together 23 articles in total and is divided into three major themes: 1) the explosion of unemployment and the different types of precarious work; 2) the different forms of productive restructuring of capital and the new morphology of work; and 3) dimensions of the unionism crisis: paths and detours. Antunes reveals nuances and the main conclusions of the research in the following interview.

JU – What does the book’s set of research point out?
Antunes – In this research, we were able to draw some features of the new morphology of work in Brazil. We found that this is no longer a question of circumstantial, fluctuating precariousness, but we are witnessing a structural precariousness of work. This is the strongest and most present data in the different categories and lines of work studied. To grow and compete today, it is necessary to increase productivity; to increase it, it is necessary to reduce costs, carry out “organizational freeze-drying”. This means entering a war in which the Chinese standard of remuneration for the workforce drops workers' wages to the lowest possible level. Unemployment results from this state of affairs.
It is interesting to note that, in this new design, we also have many differences. In the metallurgical sector, for example, you have the same company like Volkswagen, which is disrupting its factory in ABC and, at the same time, has a flexible plant in Rezende, Rio, whose workers are entirely outsourced.

In the Campinas region, for example, Toyota only hires young workers, aged 20 or over, without trade union or political experience, without a Taylorist or Fordist background. And, preferably, single people, so that they can get involved in the company’s “involvement” project.

JU – What are the activities that face retraction and those that expand the most?
Antunes – We found that, in parallel with the decline of sectors such as footwear and textiles, there is an explosion in telemarketing work. There are around 600 thousand, with more than 70% of this workforce made up of women. Working conditions are very harsh. The pace and intensity of activities, illnesses such as RSI [repetitive strain injuries] in banks and telemarketing, are typical of the era of computerization of work. Which led us to another observation: in the midst of the information machinery, we are witnessing the phase of informalization of work.

There is also a very significant process of “feminization” of work, present in various branches and sectors, which follows a trend also present in advanced capitalist countries. We also show that previously little studied activities, such as lyrical singing and orchestras – which are more refined jobs – suffered the consequences of this productive restructuring. The work of the lyrical singer, for example, is already marked by strong individualization and high competition among the restricted and qualified number of artists. In a context that has also deregulated this sector, the almost virtuality of work is also accentuated.

The research managed to draw “traditional” and “modern” sectors, showing the different forms of the most acute informality – the street vendor, the perueiro, the motorcycle courier, etc. They are those who work almost on the fringes of the system. It turns out that this same system depends on them in order to function. This offered a multifaceted design of the work. However, there was no sector that was not marked by this trait of precariousness.

Finally, in parallel with this, all sectors exert some type of resistance. They said, for example, that bank employees could no longer strike – the category was reduced, sectors disappeared or were reorganized, such as compensation – but the unions still exercised forms of action and resistance. In the factories, there is a very muted revolt against this state of things. From the more individualized boycott of production (and productivity that increases by reducing working conditions) to more collective actions. All of this appears at length and in detail in the book.

JU – To what extent are workers affected by this process?
Antunes – The so-called polyvalence or multifunctionality is, in essence, the intensification of the rhythms, times and movements of work in the productive world. Being versatile means working much harder. That appearance of a “modern and humanized” company has in essence a company that uses very old modalities of work. These are old ways that are being recovered, in addition to the extension of the journey in various branches. All of this is marked by an intense process of precariousness, which I call structural. These findings are present even in the most qualified and advanced sectors. It is a world that creates wealth and adds value, but which has a striking feature of this insertion into the globality of capital given by the different forms of precariousness and loss of work.

JU - Where is the wealth and where is the misery?
Antunes – Brazil was once seventh, eighth in the world – today it is close to 15th position. If we also imagine that the country, together with Mexico, is the largest economy in Latin America, it is demonstrated that there is a very large potential for producing wealth, ranging from industry to banks, from commerce to agriculture. However, the same contingent of 80 million workers that comprises our economically active population, which produces this wealth, results in an impoverished working class, often marked by levels of pauperization and even misery, whether material, immaterial or spiritual.

This misery, therefore, does not only affect the number of unemployed people. This impoverishment also affects a significant portion of employed workers, such as, for example, in the informal sector, extensively analyzed in the book. These same conditions are also experienced by salaried workers in the textile and footwear sector, for example, given the closure of thousands of jobs. The idea behind the book's title was to explore this dialectic of wealth and misery.

JU – What do studies show about informality? When was the trigger pulled that threw millions of workers onto the streets?
Antunes – Brazil had, in the recent past, until the mid-70s, a level of informality that was much lower. Our insertion in this explosion of informality took place mainly during the 90s, when the country experienced intense movements.

JU – What were they?
Antunes – The first was the fact that our productive restructuring came relatively late. In central countries, it began in the mid-70s and intensified in the following decade. In Brazil there was a timid attempt in the mid-80s, but it came explosively in the 90s. It was an overwhelming movement.

The second movement occurred because this restructuring coincided with the implementation of neoliberal pragmatics in the country, which culminated in the deregulation of the economy, the release of imports and the beginning of labor flexibility. This began under the Collor government, but under Fernando Henrique Cardoso, as it was not possible to change the CLT in its backbone, because there was a lot of resistance from the unions, a double movement occurred. On the one hand, companies began to implement, in the concrete nature of their day-to-day activities, “forced flexibility”. And, to this end, the Fernando Henrique government took some measures that made the labor market in Brazil more flexible and disorganized (from the margin to the center).

One of them was to provide legal support for the business community to impose this flexibility. In the mid-90s, we started to see informality jump from 15%, 20% to 40%. If we think about informality in the broadest sense, today it is already close to 60%, which means something around 48 million people, covering a very varied range of sectors.

JU – What stands out most about this restructuring in all of the work?
Antunes – Some conclusions are important. The first, which has to do with the fact that it happened late, but intensely and concentratedly in the 90s. When it came, it was for real. The combination of this late nature and intensity meant that, in a decade, Brazil was transformed.

The second important observation is that Taylorism and Fordism in Brazil, very strong in the genesis of Brazilian industrialization in the first half of the 20th century, have undergone strong changes. But, in the various branches studied by us, there are still many elements of continuity, combined with clear traces of discontinuity. We are experiencing, then, a kind of industrialization arising from Taylorism and Fordism that is being restructured, in the face of the so-called era of the flexible company, preserving elements of both continuity and discontinuity.

JU – What does that mean?
Antunes – If Taylorism and Fordism have not yet died out in Brazil, the industry that followed their design has been heavily affected. On the other hand, all the sectors researched in the book suffered strong influences from this era of flexible accumulation, so-called reengineering, and lean companies. In such a way that understanding the particularity of industrialization and the service sector in Brazil implies a careful analysis of each branch or sector. Brazil is still a little Taylorist in some areas, a lot in others, but all the sectors analyzed have suffered the impact of this restructuring. In such a way that, as a trend movement, we are no longer an exclusively Taylorist or Fordist country, but we are witnessing a clear hybridity between remaining forms of Fordism/Taylorism with elements originating from the so-called Toyotism and, in particular, the so-called flexible accumulation. This is because all the sectors studied were greatly affected by this ideology and pragmatics that mark the reengineering of the so-called modern company.

JU – Was Brazil prepared for this restructuring? Who is responsible for us reaching this state of affairs?
Antunes – We are going here to move towards another reading and conception, against the tide. It was late because there was resistance from the workers. It was a positive movement because it was up to workers to defend their interests and rights. If it had been coming earlier, the precariousness would have been even earlier. The fact that she arrived late is not a defect, but rather a merit, when the gaze focuses on the universe of work.

JU – Why?
Antunes – Why Brazilian trade unionism, in the 80s, went against the current of international trade unionism. While trade unionism in advanced countries already had an amplified crisis, we had a golden decade here. It would be enough to say that in 83 the CUT was born and, later, other centers followed in its wake. We also had the Constituent Assembly from 86 to 88, with the unions pushing hard for it to guarantee rights to workers, so that it would be socially positive. We can say, today, after the neoliberal (and social-liberal) wave, that it is quite reasonable in terms of labor rights.

We also had a huge strike in the 80s that prevented this destructive process from happening before. It was the time of the explosion of new unionism, helping to take Brazil out of the military dictatorship. The social forces of work exercised a lot of potential, which hindered this productive restructuring, which was the work of capital. And it must be said: just as it is considered positive for capital, it is destructive for work. There was a clash. On the other hand, in the 80s, we had the first half under the military dictatorship and the second under the PMDB project. But it was not the Sarney government that leveraged neoliberalism in Brazil.

The imposition of so-called globalization found its launch in Collor's project and, later, in Fernando Henrique's. I see this delay, therefore, as a positive fact. The country that leaves now is not the 7th, 8th economy in the world, but a much more impoverished and subordinate country. Just compare the trajectory of the last 20 years of China and India with that of Brazil. We are on a downward path, while they were on an upward path. And it is worth remembering that social explosions and revolts are increasing intensely in today's China.

JU – To what extent did this combative unionism of the 80s weaken throughout the 90s? To what do you attribute this?
Antunes – By combining these points. The productive restructuring had a profound impact on companies. Just to give you an idea, ABC in São Paulo had 240 workers at its peak, at the time of the miracle; today there are less than 100 thousand. Bank employees reached one million and there are just over 400 thousand. Campinas once had 70 metalworkers and today has 48. There was then a quantitative retraction in several sectors that make up the more traditional working class.

The second element is that, with the deregulation of the economy and the globalization of capital, there was an increase in competition between companies – the footwear, textile and automobile industries were affected. The footwear industry, for example, is in agony. Research shows that the textile industry has lost, in some of its large companies, 50% to 70% of workers. In parallel and within these flexibility/precariousness measures, outsourcing has expanded.

JU – What were the effects?
Antunes – With the outsourcing of production, several companies eliminated their stable workers – they hire when there is production, and fire when there is a downturn in the economy.

The third element, which is an important ideological component, was the end of the Soviet Union, at the turn of the 80s and beginning of the 90s. There was an ideological avalanche that became famous in Margaret Thatcher's speech (“There is no alternative”) or even in Fukuyama’s apologetic speech (“The End of History”). There was the idea that capitalism was finally victorious and that socialism had died. This weakened many left-wing organizations, unions and parties, who were trapped in the Soviet model. With the end of the Soviet Union, then, many abandoned the perspective of advancement of the left (union and party) and migrated, more or less slowly, to the conservative side.

JU – How did this process happen in Brazil?
Antunes – Several of the former union activists of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), for example, went to the CGT and later migrated to Força Sindical. Parallel to this weakening of the left (especially, but not only) linked to the Soviet project, there was also a fourth movement: social democracy, which had a clear reformist and social sense from the 20s to the 50s, was pushed in the 70s and 80s to the neoliberal agenda, generating social-liberalism. And this migration from the socialist or communist left to more right-wing positions, and from social democracy to the neoliberal agenda, has greatly weakened the world of work. It is a set of changes that touched on materiality and subjectivity. This meant that, in the Brazilian case, the world of work and its union representation were profoundly changed.

It would be enough to give two examples. One of them is the migration that the CUT makes towards more moderate, partnership-based, negotiating unionism. The other is the migration that the PT makes, which has now been consolidated with Lula's victory. It stopped being a left-wing party and became a traditional party, which does politics like others do. It became what I have been calling the Party of Order for a long time.

JU – You mentioned the elections. They were marked by controversy regarding privatizations. What analysis do you make of them in this more general picture of the world of work?
Antunes – The effect was intense. Brazil had a tripod that structured our accumulation pattern, which was formed by the national and international productive sectors and state productive capital. The latter, which ranged from telecommunications, steel, oil and electricity, was intensely disrupted with the privatization of the 90s. For the world of work, this privatization had an immediate consequence. The adoption of this path, the privatization of the public sector, weakened and disorganized an important pillar of workers' unionism in the public sector.

Companies that had 15 thousand workers registered a reduction to less than a third. Banco do Brasil, studied in the book, underwent a profound restructuring, even without privatization, which left a significant portion of bank employees who had tenured jobs unemployed. PDVs [voluntary dismissal plans], as our research found, were a very disruptive element in the world of banking work. Suddenly, after many years of work, they received the information that they would have to voluntarily resign; otherwise, they would be involuntarily fired.

Outsourcing, precariousness and unemployment were the main results of this privatization process. That's why pockets of informality grew. On the one hand, the private world was becoming smaller, more precarious and unemployed. On the other hand, the public world was downsizing, outsourcing and also making people unemployed. Street vendors, street vendors, owners of small enterprises, the so-called “entrepreneurs”, the third sector, in short, all those activities that are more on the margins of the industrial and service world, which, in addition, are found become increasingly intertwined.

JU – Returning to trade unionism. What assessment do you make of the arrival of entire staff to central power?
Antunes – This unionism, which was thriving in the 70s and 80s, with a clear desire to build workers' autonomy in relation to the State and capital, entered this turmoil in the 90s. Upon leaving this turmoil, in the second half of the 90s and at the beginning In the 2000s, it was very different. The first element is that this unionism aged prematurely as it became a prisoner of this productive restructuring, this neoliberal wave, in addition to maintaining in force, as heirs of the CLT, elements of the old union structure from the first half of the XNUMXth century.

He ended up embracing an ideology, either through negotiating unions or through partnership unions, advocated by European trade unionism. Partnerships with European centers were very intense. It is as if we were to copy the activities of the old trade unionism in France, Germany and Italy, typical of the social democracy of the 80s and 90s. All this coupled with a unionism that was young and strong in the 70s and 80s. Adherence to these elements and intense changes in the world of work led to the adaptation of the “new unionism” to the order.

When the Lula government came to power in 2002, there was another parallel movement. These union leaders, some of whom come from the left – whether from the traditional left, the Catholic left or those outside the orbit of the PCs – join those who came from the so-called authentic unionism, as is the case of Lula, for example. They were trade unionists who entered trade unionism without previous political experience. What in the 70s was “apolitical unionism” ended up making, in the 80s and 90s, union activity a ladder to get to politics. And, arriving at politics, no longer equipped with the elements that marked the origins of the CUT and the PT, but rather from a world where the dismantling of ideologies predominated.

Many sectors of trade unionism saw this rise to State bodies, this rise – first from trade unionism to Parliament, then from Parliament to ministries, management of state companies, etc. – as a form of social ascension and adherence to dominant values. .

JU – Can you generalize?
Antunes – This happened mainly in the dominant trend within the CUT – Articulação Sindical, which experienced this process intensely. I would not say that this process is one of depoliticization, but rather an exchange of combative union action with political contours in the 80s, for a policy subordinated to order and increasingly negotiating and in partnership with capital.

This socio-political rise has made some of them, today in power, feel very comfortable, whether as politicians or as partners in a destructive policy that they denied in the past and today they navigate with ease. From the management of political funds, the rise of pension funds, not to mention the participation of so many of them in corruption cases. A very impressive feature is that all these scandals that hit the Lula government – ​​from the monthly allowance to the dossier – have the significant presence of former union members who were part of this new unionism. This is symptomatic of the level of deterioration in this process. From trade unionists to “symbolic analysts”, they arrived at “big politics” to reproduce the “old politics”, the opposite of what they advocated 20 years ago.

JU – But not everyone was a member of this new unionism.
Antunes – The origins are indeed different. While Lula entered union action without any previous political experience, Gushiken and many others had great activism on the left. Let's say that this movement is heterogeneous in its genesis. But the mutations of the 90s and everyone's belonging to the Articulação Sindical trend, which dominates the CUT, shaped different union subjectivities, which in turn shaped themselves to this project of social ascension, of depoliticization in the sense of left-wing unionism. and critical, assuming another politicization in the sense of adapting to the order.

If in the past, they had great differentiation in origin, in the present they form a very similar cake. What differentiates Gushiken, Berzoini, Lorezentti, Bargas today? Everyone is the king's servant... Everyone did everything necessary for the PT to remain in power. In this process, there were no political, ideological or ethical limits.
Let's look at the examples: from working in pension funds, playing hard to privatize public pensions, carrying out the “reforms” that Fernando Henrique wanted to do and that at the time the CUT and PT were against, and later ended up implementing . Until privatizations are carried out. The PT rightly says that the FHC government was privatist, which is true; it just doesn't say that he was either. What are PPPs [Public Private Partnership]? They were born with English neoliberalism, under the Margaret Thatcher government. What is PróUni, if not the privatist incentive of higher education to the detriment of a leap that could be greater in public education.

While Fernando Henrique privatized on the national scene, Palocci privatized on the Ribeirão Preto scene. Santo André City Hall privatized the city. In other words, the PT was also privatized in the 90s, only on a micro scale. The PSDB was on a macro scale. The Lula government was not more privatist because almost everything had already been privatized previously. As we have just seen, the criticism of privatizations in Lula's campaign was a political marketing decision, to impede the advance of the tucanato in the first round.

The ideological campaign against privatization was important for Lula to find an antidote to the anti-corruption proposal, which was Alckmin's flagship. Anyone who sees the PT campaigning thinks that the party is against privatizations. The government did not review any privatization, not even the most scandalous ones, and privatized what it could. It reached the limit, unthinkable in the PT of the 80s, of taxing Brazilian retirees and starting to dismantle public pensions.

JU – What do you expect from the second term?
Antunes – It is very difficult to make a prediction. I may have an intuition. Fernando Henrique was re-elected very calmly. In the second term, the population got tired.

Much of Lula's first term was spent on a tightrope, since the “mensalão” crisis exploded. Last year, the Lula government did what every traditional politician does: opened the Treasury and played hardball. He expanded the welfare action, in order to differentiate it from that practiced by FHC. Furthermore, it maintained the same orthodoxy of fiscal policy, the same financial policy of high interest rates, the same economic policy of surplus. But it did not touch on any burning issue, such as agrarian reform, and when it did, as in the case of GMOs, it was blatantly giving in to the dictates of the large conglomerates, with which the Lula government coexisted very comfortably.

I think the second term should be more difficult for Lula. It begins without resolving the dossier scandal against Serra, in which people in Lula's command and close quarters were directly involved. This will always be used by the opposition in times of crisis. The government was born, then, with this stain.

The second point is that it is not possible to imagine, with ease, that the economy will run, over the next four years, as smoothly as it did in the first period. I think we will enter a period of much more turbulence. And popular movements, such as the MST, will demand much more from Lula than in the first term.