Bitter dispute: The political economy of divided labor in Brazil.

Abstract

This dissertation explores labor movement political division under Brazilian democracy. The study traces the evolution of labor movement political division from the transition to democratic rule during the early 1980s to the development of the bitter dispute between the rival Central Unica dos Trabalhadores (CUT) and Forca Sindical labor centrals during the early 1990s. This examination of divided labor focuses upon these national labor leadership organizations and the collective action strategies they promoted within the labor movement and the workforce. The dissertation challenges conventional explanations of labor movement political division based exclusively upon labor leadership rivalry, organizational competition or political party contestation. This examination argues that the bitter dispute from 1991-1994 was fundamentally a conflict about the optimum collective action strategy for conceiving and pursuing workers' interests under capitalist democracy in Brazil. This type of political division, expressed by the elaboration and coordination of competing collective action strategies, emerged from three interrelated conditions. First, the structure of Brazilian capitalism intensified class conflict between workers and their employers under democracy. Second, the rising tide of class conflict was mediated through labor market segmentation. Labor market segmentation shaped the structure of choices confronting Brazilian workers. Third, the intensification of class conflict under democracy propelled the organization of a working class political threat, demonstrated by the growth of both the CUT and the Partido dos Trabalhadores. This threat to employers induced many of them to exchange immediate benefits to their employees for their political cooperation. This political exchange was promoted and coordinated by the Forca Sindical. Thus, this dissertation concludes that the bitter dispute arose from the clash between the organization and promotion of a class based strategy and one linked to political cooperation with employers. This study suggests that theories of labor movement political division be linked to the type of division in question. Also, that labor movement division based upon competition between alternative strategies be explained as the result of the interaction between economic and political variables, particularly as they impact the structures of choice facing workers under capitalist democracy.