Industrial Relations and Trade Unions in Brazil

Industrial Relations and Trade Unions in BrazilIntroductionThe tuition of the Brazilian system of industrial relations and its trade union movement, like in any separate country is embedded in the formation of a sector of wage labor.The debate on trade unions and industrial relations systems is unison in recognize a crisis in the labor movement that unquestionable since the 1980s decade, and much of the safaris were spent identifying the causes of the crisis and exploring pathways to overcome it. However, the debate was stated looking in the first place to the situation of the developed countries, specially the US and Western Europe, and the immense kind of scenarios on the Global South were kept at the fringes of the academic discussion. Part of the explanation is that the theory of industrial relations and trade unions, depends of the existence of a deliver population performing wage labor. As the most of the Global South was kept infra colonial systems sometimes as far as the mid-seventies decade, and the labor regimes were much more similar to slavery or serfdom than to the regimes in Western societies, the wage labor in those regions has received few assist since the early developments of the fields.Although being achieved independence from Portugal in 1822, the slavery was abolished only in 1888, giving birth to the Brazilian Research QuestionLiterature ReviewAs the thesis proposed is divided in three main sections, also the literature can be grouped in three relatively independent bodies. First, the effort to describe the Brazilian industrial relations system and the current role of trade unions start with the normative environment expressed in the Brazilian laws, mainly the Consolidation of Labor Laws (Consolidao das Leis do Trabalho), enacted in 1943 in the period of Getlio Vargas dictatorship, in autocratic manner, and despite being updated that is still under effectThe notion that workers have some male monarch resources is present implici tly in the labor theories of value, and the assumption of the central role of labor in payoff brings the deald of the idea of structural baron. As a development of this centrality of labor, the motto Workers of the world, unite is the recognition that the organization of workers is able to create power. In that way, most of the authors that considered the workers and the running(a) class for analysis assume the existence and/or the possibility of creation of power resources and its relations with labor conflicts. However, to provide a clearer abstractive referential, is necessary to take the opinion towards a tipification of the power resources available to workers.The first sources to be considered is Perrone (1983, 1984) unfinished articles, both edited by Eric O. Wright. Aiming to operationalize a variable that explain the strike appearance and the wage levels in antithetic economic sectors, the author presents a definition of positional power1 as the potential of a cert ain group of workers to catch disruption in the economic structure. In that sense, as higher the interdependence of the whole economy to a sector, higher is the positional power of the workers in that sector. To banner this variable Perrone uses an input-output matrix to account the dependence of the economy to a specific sector. The findings of the study is that despite the positional power can explain quite healthful differences in wage levels, the variable isnt sufficient to explain the strike propensity.Concerned with the noncorrelation amidst positional power and the propensity to strike, Eric O. Wright, in the postscript of Perrone (1984), begins developing the conceit of organizational power. He proposes the disruptive potential does not automatically leads to an effective bargaining power of workers, since a group of workers can be present impression levels of solidarity and weak organizational resources. However, he sees the positional power as the main determinant of organizational power, assuming the disruptive potential as determinant of the cost-benefit trade-off in organizing and conducing collective actions. Wright states that we should expect very few cases of embarrassed organizational power in high positional power situation or the inverse.Wright (2000) evolves his concept to associational power, as the various forms of power that results from the collective organizations of workers, including such things as unions and parties but may also include a variety of other forms, such as works councils or forms of institutional representation of workers on boards of directors in schemes of worker codetermination, or even, incertain circumstances, community organizations(p. 962). He note the concept of structural power as the resultant of the location of workers within the economic system. Analyzing the sites of class compromise, the author recognizes that is possible that an increasing in the associational power of workers can benefit the e mployers interests. He presents three institutional spheres of class conflict and consequently, sites where class compromise can be forged the sphere of exchange, concerning labor trade and all sort of commodity markets, being the labor unions as the expression of the associational power in this sphere the sphere of production, meaning the intra-firm relations, the labor processes and expert patterns, and the works councils as the expression of workers associational power the sphere of politics, concerning the shaping and execution of state policies and the management of the state-enforced rules, with the political parties being the form of the associational power of workers. Seeking to understand the mechanisms that allows these different forms of workers associational power to forge positive compromises with the employers.The main feature on the Wrights notion of power resources, for the purpose of the present proposal, is that he assumes workers organizations, for instance unio ns, works councils and labor parties as the same as workers power. This strong assumption disregards many concepts in industrial relations literature, by typifying the forms that workers organizations can assume. First, the different structures presented arent common to the different industrial relations and political systems. Second, ignore the movement/organization dualism tracked by Hyman (20042-3, 200060-1) trough the theory of trade unions. Third, other authors see a very different nature of workers power, as presented below.Elaborating the positional/structural source of workers power while looking to the workers in mass production industries, Arrighi and specie (1984) divide the concept in market-place bargaining power of workers, as the power embodied in the scarcity of a specific skill possessed by workers, and in workplace bargaining power, as the power of workers when they are expending they labor-power within the course of capitalist labor process(pp 193-4). Although th e concept is still incipient, it leads to a further strong development, presented in Silver (2005). In this paper, she recover the concept of Wright (2000) for the associational power and put in detail the structural power and its subtypes marketplace bargaining power that results directly from the labor markets, an can take several forms, as (1) the possession of scarce skills that are in demand by employers, (2) low levels of general unemployment, and (3) the ability of workers to pull out of the labor market entirely and survive on nonwage sources of income(200513), and workplace bargaining power, identical to the Perrones concept of positional power. The conceptualisation then is used to measure the in what extent the transformations in the organization of production and the proccess of globalization affected the workers power.Based in large extent in the same theoretical framework developed by Wright and Silver, the Jenas power resource approach (Drre et al., 2009) contribute adding a new dimension to the dimensions of workers power, the institutional power, meaning the incorporation of the organizational and structural power into social institutions. They argue that Silver ignored this dimension of power, what is very improbable, since she assumes that the associational power has been embedded in state legitimate frameworks that guaranteed such things as the right to form trade unions as well as the obligation of employers to bargain collectively with trade unions(200514).The authors, with help of others, advance in the conceptualization of workers power, adding a new dimension, the societal power (Drre and Schmalz, 2013). The authors then build an explicit typification of the various dimensions of power, presented below.Structural PowerAssociational Powerinstitutional PowerSocietal PowerForms of practiceInterruption of capital appropriationFormation of workersReference to chartered rightsInteraction with other societal actorsShop grace levelLabor u nrestJob changeWorkers committeeWorks councilShop stewardsWorks constitutionCooperation and discursive power exceed inevitably the boundaries between these distinct levelsInter-company levelEconomic strikesTrade unionsFree collective bargainingSocietal levelPolitical strikesWorkers partiesConstitutionLaws and legislationOf course this typification is not the only one possible, and others will be considered and treated in the further research process for the master thesis, in order to compare and integrate, if valuable and feasible, to the theoretical framework. In advance, two alternative approaches, although being largely intersected, will be examined, namely the typifications developed by Donna McGuire and Christian Lvesque and Gregor Murray various articles.(tipyfication not effectual all the times, organisation dont means power because of bureacratization, but related with Jena PRA organisational power is a resource that can only be acquired through strategically aforethought( ip) collective action and formal organisation WP and WO only are close related when the workers have the control of the organisationparties can serve to indivudual promotion or following political power per se, WC can be coopted by management or signify promotion on carrer, and unions can develop leaders dettached from its social derriere (trough institutionalisation)1The author uses positional power and structural power as sinonyms.