The crisis of the neodevelopmentalist political front and the discussion about trade unionism in Brazil

Abstract

This article aims to indicate and discuss a few hypotheses for investigating the role of trade unionism in the Brazilian political crisis, more precisely between the years of 2015 and 2017. My argumentation is structured in the following way: in a first moment, I briefly review some of the features of the Lula and Rousseff administrations (2003 – 2016) that enabled the recovery of strike action vis-à-vis the neoliberal period, which comprised the Collor, Itamar Franco, and Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1990 – 2002) administrations. In a second moment, I will address the political and economic crisis of the Dilma Rousseff administrations and the disputes triggered by her ousting, when labor found itself openly confronted with the labor and pension reforms. My main hypothesis, from which others, secondary ones, are derived, is that if the impeachment, to some extent, caused a division between the national trade union centers, at this juncture of neoliberal restoration the trade union centers share more points of unity, not necessarily around tactics and strategies, but rather around the same banners of struggle.