Union affiliation and strike movement trends in the Brazilian public sector in the 2000s

• In Event: New tendencies in Latin American trade unions

Abstract

Important changes have occurred in unionization rates and in the strike movement in Brazil throughout recent decades. In contrast to the OECD countries, since the late 1990s until 2006 Brazilian union affiliation considerably increased. These same years were characterized by a declining and low intensity strike movement. However, since the end of last decade a major reversal of these trends took place - conceivably affected by the international financial crisis, which led to a slowdown in the Brazilian economy and to a deterioration in the public accounts. Unionization rates declined while the amount of strikes and, especially, the number of working hours lost due to strikes, experienced a significant rise. An examination of the data also reveals that the strike movement was more intense in the public sector, accounting for around 80% of the total working hours lost. There is evidence that, in the private sector of the economy, despite having experienced a somewhat sluggish growth, strike activity has remained at relatively low levels. The specific aim of this article is to examine the public sector, identifying union membership and strike activity trends, the branches most affected, as well as to analyze its causes and meaning.

The broader issue in the focus of the research is to verify whether the basic features of the corporatist conflict regulation institutions, inherited from the model set up in Brazil in the 1930s (and reformed in the 1980s), have been affected by the trade union density decline and by the rise of the strike movement. The research is based on an analysis of labor legislation, and on data collected both from the Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies (DIEESE) and from the National Household Survey of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (PNAD-IBGE).

Authors

• Walter A Pichler, Fundação de Economia e Estatística Friedrich Emanuel Heuser

• Patricia K Biasoli