Labor Day

Ever since thousands of American workers took to the streets of Chicago in 1886, protesting against poor working conditions and demanding an eight-hour workday against the near-servitude regime that oppressed and exploited them, May 1st has become "Labor Day." In truth, every day should be dedicated to those who set the world's machinery in motion, to the workers of the fields, cities, commerce, industry, education, and public service. Nothing will ever replace the power of labor.

In Brazil during the first decades of the last century, May 1st was celebrated in the emerging unions in the large cities, which were still without any significant presence, but were demanding rights in a country where labor legislation didn't even exist or where the basic rights of workers were not respected by capital. Only with the advent of the liberal revolution of 1930 and the arrival of Getúlio Vargas to power, and after defeating the uprising of the reactionary elite of São Paulo in 1932, was the political and institutional framework established that allowed for the recognition of the rights and guarantees of Brazilian workers.

With Getúlio, formal employment contracts and labor laws. With Jango, the 13th-month salary. With Lula, social emancipation. Three great presidents who treated the working class with the respect it deserves.

Before Getúlio Vargas, the working class was treated with disdain and authoritarianism, in an inhumane environment where a factory worker, shop worker, agricultural worker, or domestic worker was dismissed after decades of work and left empty-handed, without any compensation or support, after toiling in conditions akin to slavery. Those who criticize the late statesman focus their criticism on the supposed inspiration of our labor laws in Mussolini's famous 'Carta del Lavoro' (Charter of Labor). But they omit that the great Atatürk, the founder of today's rich and democratic Turkey, also drew inspiration from it to modernize labor relations in his country. And in pre-Salazar Portugal, and in democratic France and several other countries in the northern hemisphere, it served as embryonic labor legislation. It was, truly, despite its ideological origin, an advance for countries where workers were treated (or rather, mistreated) abusively and without the recognition of any right, however minimal.

With the advent of the 13th salary, a bill by Labor Senator Aarão Steinbruch promptly sanctioned by President João Goulart, a new victory was achieved for the working class, with a substantial increase in their wage earnings and the reaffirmation of their inalienable rights.

During the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, after a decade of economic decline and social backwardness, when neoliberalism, represented by the PSDB/DEM coalition government, strove to "bury the Vargas Era"—which can be translated as "removing workers' rights as much as possible and handing over national wealth to speculative capital"—workers regained respect and benefited from the greatest social mobility on record: 40 million Brazilians left classes D and E and moved into the middle class. They began to earn more, consume more, live better, build, acquire durable goods, travel, eat, and study as they had not been able to before. A peaceful and democratic social revolution that buried an unjust and exclusionary Brazil and gave way to the young power that emerges in the 21st century, admired and respected by other nations.

Much remains to be done, and Dilma Rousseff's government continues Lula's gigantic work. But it is essential to remember the wage stagnation to which everyone was subjected in the governments that preceded the arrival of the PT and the allied parties to power. The disrespectful treatment of retirees, called "vagabonds" by Fernando Henrique Cardoso. The permanent humiliation to which public employees were subjected, treated as useless and discriminated against, when in fact they are a national asset. All of this, thankfully, has changed.

Lula inherited a bankrupt and demoralized country, where the minimum wage was only R$ 200, leaving it at R$ 510 by the end of his term, with a real increase of 155%, compared to just over 80% under the Cardoso administration. The numbers don't lie: Brazilian workers received a real increase of almost double when comparing Lula's government with that of Cardoso!

The scourge of unemployment has been eradicated, with the recovery of the national economy, the increase in our exports, and the absorption of labor in all sectors: industry, commerce, agriculture, and services. There is full employment in various professional categories or segments of the economy. The lines of unemployed people seeking the few available jobs are a grim image of a past whose return we will not allow.

Workers are more aware and more organized, in their unions and their union federations, listened to with respect by Dilma Rousseff's government, and conscious of their historical role in building the great country we have become. The struggle has no end, only continuity. And it is intertwined with the future of a country that we love so much and that is the fruit of the strength, talent, determination, and fighting spirit of its valiant working people.

Long live May 1st! Long live the Brazilian worker!

 

(*) Delúbio Soares is a professor

 

www.delubio.com.br

 

www.twitter.com/delubiosoares

 

www.facebook.com/delubiosoares

 

companheirodelubio@gmail.com