'We are living through a very dangerous witch hunt period'

Fernanda Canofre, On the 21 - At the beginning of the year, Valdete Souto Severo, a labor judge from the 4th region in Porto Alegre, was chosen by lot to evaluate an injunction from unions linked to five state foundations facing extinction since the approval of the project presented by the José Ivo Sartori (PMDB) government in a controversial vote at the end of December in the Legislative Assembly. The unions requested that the dismissals—announced with "urgency" by the state government—be halted until a collective agreement was reached. The magistrate accepted the requestShe didn't imagine, however, that she would have a strange milestone in her career there.

Although she wasn't the only judge to order the suspension of layoffs until a collective agreement was reached, in the case of foundations, Valdete was the one who suffered the most. attacks on social mediaPhotos of her began circulating with adjectives such as "shitty judge," "dirty whore," and "slut." A website linked to the Free Brazil Movement (MBL) fueled the backlash against her, calling her decision "far-left." On her social media profile, the judge stated: "It is not, therefore, a matter of agreeing or disagreeing with a particular judicial decision. It is a sordid attempt to annihilate what the other represents in their human condition."

A labor court judge since 2001, she says she always wanted to be a judge, but only chose the labor law path after working with another magistrate in the criminal area, who had been a civil servant in the Labor Court and encouraged her. During college, while shadowing the judge in the afternoon, Valdete also divided her time between law school at night and teaching children of literacy age in the morning. "It was a rush! I miss it, I loved teaching the little ones," she says.

But in labor law, she seems to have found her calling. A member of the National Forum in Defense of the Rights of Workers Affected by Outsourcing, Valdete has also made combating outsourcing one of her main priorities and has become a leading figure in the field. While abroad, she spoke with Sul21 by phone about the significance of the extinction of foundations in the world of work, the attacks she has suffered, and why labor justice is seen as the villain in Brazil. Check it out:

Valdete Souto Severo: The MBL is an organized movement with specific objectives, among which is to help dismantle the sham of a welfare state that we have painstakingly achieved in the country. Therefore, attacking those who work with social rights is part of that. To speak of "far-left ideas" is laughable. Moreover, this insistence on labeling people who oppose the common sense of capital as "PT supporters" or "leftists" usually reveals only a way of trying to disqualify the discourse. Perhaps I even wanted to be identified that way, but I am a judge. I work, therefore, from within the system, which is capitalist and, if we insist on these reductionist dualisms, clearly aligns itself with the right. The intensity and aggressiveness of the demonstrations against the decision, without even alluding to its terms, but focusing on personal and misogynistic insults, shows that social rights are truly facing a period of open opposition, and all those who defend them are in the crosshairs of those who want to destroy them. This episode that happened to me has already been repeated with other colleagues. We are living through a very dangerous witch hunt. We must pay attention to this. It's the phenomenon of mass reaction, which Hannah Arendt addresses so well in her work, and it ends up creating legions of imbeciles. People who offend without knowing, criticize without reading, reproduce preconceived notions, many of which affect them, that is, concretely signify the loss of even the typically liberal (or "right-wing," as some prefer) rights to freedom. If someone should be offended because they make a decision in a legal process, they can also be attacked in the street, lynched, and from then on we lose all limits. Those who attack today may be attacked tomorrow. Therefore, to revolt against this is to defend the right to demonstrate and to practice professionally for all people.

Sul21: You've been a labor court judge for 15 years. Had you experienced something similar before in other cases you judged?

Valdete Souto Severo: I've experienced pressure or encouragement to change decisions in a more internal, corporate way, so to speak, but never personal attacks like this time.

Sul21: What was your first reaction when you came across the messages that were circulating on the internet?

Valdete Souto Severo: The first thing I did was talk to my son, because he's 16 and I thought those insults might reach him. And indeed, he had already seen them. But I talked to him, he was very kind and gave me great support. After that, I wasn't following anything, but I found out through a colleague from the Association [of Labor Court Magistrates] who contacted me saying he was available for some reaction, in the form of a statement or even legal action to prevent the insults from continuing. I tried not to look at those pages, but I was outraged. That was the feeling. I wasn't so personally offended, because the people who were speaking there don't know me and they were personal insults, not so much related to the decision. But I felt I had to take some action because it was a manifestation of misogyny. It's pure sexism, a desire to deconstruct the interlocutor without dialogue. The feeling is one of outrage; I was very indignant about what happened.

Sul 21: Do you think that if the case involved a judge, a man, it would have generated the same level of attack?

Valdete Souto Severo: I spoke about this with a friend who thinks so, that it would be a personal attack if I were a man. I don't think so. I think there's a very strong issue of sexism. When a woman does something that displeases someone, the first reaction is always to disqualify her and it's always an attack on her femininity: "whore," "slut," "bitch." I find it hard to believe that a man would suffer this kind of offense if he had issued a decision, which in fact wasn't even innovative. When I issued the decision in those cases, two other colleagues had already expressed similar opinions, and there was even a decision from the [Labor] Court confirming similar injunctions to those I issued.

Valdete Souto Severo: Yes, the decisions haven't been sanctioned. The problem is that the law itself stipulates that it must be done within a maximum of 180 days. Therefore, they are imminent. The biggest problem brought up in the proceedings is that the State government itself stated that it would urgently arrange these dismissals to prevent the Labor Court from intervening in this process in any way. I think the main problem is that these people, hired through public competitive examinations, could not actually be dismissed without a specific justification in the form of existing law or even Article 7 of the Constitution, which I referred to in the decision. We could even be discussing the constitutionality of the law that was approved regarding the dismissal of employees hired through competitive examinations. Just to remind you, the decision I issued, and that two other colleagues, Maria Teresa [Vieira da Silva Oliveira] and Maurício [Schmidt Bastos], also issued, which are being confirmed by the Court, are preliminary injunctions. In other words, the matter will still be reviewed by the competent court, which is the Specialized Court for actions against the State; in the case of Porto Alegre, it is the 18th, and the decisions will either be confirmed or not. Therefore, these are measures that were adopted due to the urgency revealed by the possibility of these workers being left without their source of income.

Sul21: The government leader in the Legislative Assembly, Deputy Gabriel Souza (PMDB), wrote on a social network that "the judicial decisions determined what the government was already going to comply with: Negotiation for layoffs." Was there any indication of this, based on what you could gather?

Valdete Souto Severo: There was no indication, at least to our knowledge, and the content of the approved law does not suggest otherwise. Because the law mandates the termination, the dismissal of employees within 180 days and makes no reference to negotiation with the unions. It's fortunate if this is the government's signal. Then it is ratifying what was decided by the Labor Court.

Sul21: One of the justifications presented by the judges against the mass layoffs – both in their decision and in the others, including those who voted to uphold them – is the impact this would have on categories of workers linked to specific areas of each foundation. Can you explain this argument a little more?

Valdete Souto Severo: There are several aspects to the eventual enforcement of this law approved in December. From a personal and social perspective, consider this: more than a thousand workers will lose their source of income. I mean, in a small community, because we're talking about Porto Alegre, the personal, social, and human impact is disastrous. These are people who identify with these foundations. Many of them have worked for these foundations for decades and, suddenly, they will be unemployed and, let's face it, without any prospect of being re-employed. The work they do is very specific; they are qualified people in very specific areas. It's not easy for them to be re-employed; it's drastic for them from that perspective.

The other perspective is that the activities carried out by these foundations – and this is what I think people aren't realizing – are indispensable activities. What Cientec (Foundation for Science and Technology) does, for example, has to continue being done because it's scientific research that matters to the State and to consumers. There's no way to give that up. In other words, what will happen with the extinction of a foundation like this, for example, is that the State will have to hire private companies to perform the same tasks. This will certainly mean even greater expenses. From an economic perspective, which is the state government's main argument – ​​that it's saving money by promoting these extinctions – this argument is fallacious and perverse as well, because what will happen is that what these foundations do, because they are not idle foundations, will have to continue being done, but it will be done through the hiring of private companies. And then, certainly, with a greater financial burden than that already borne by the State today.

Sometimes we don't realize it, but when we talk about saying goodbye, we're talking about removing a person from where they find fulfillment as a person, from where they spend most of their waking hours, from where they forge friendships. This provision contained in this state law will remove more than a thousand people from their place in the world. These people will lose their points of reference, everything they have built throughout their lives, because the workspace where they find fulfillment will simply be eliminated.

Valdete Souto Severo: First of all, whether something is "contrary to the good of the State" depends on the perspective, on which State we are talking about. Because if the State is truly the entity that should respect and promote the interests of society, then the decision endorses the State's interest. If we think of the State as something colonized by a few, who act in their own name as if they shouldn't heed the demands of society, if it were merely a company that should have efficient management, well, then perhaps it's possible to think that the decisions contradict its immediate interest. As I said before, the extinction of these foundations will determine, in the medium and long term, higher expenses for the State than they are incurring now. This, incidentally, has already begun, hasn't it? We had the news this week that... The government hired people in positions of trust. to manage the transition and dissolution of the foundations. In other words, there is already public spending where there should supposedly be savings.

Regarding classifying something as "leftist," it's striking how commonplace this has become, how people label demonstrations as leftist or right-wing. The Labor Court was not born and has never acted as a "leftist body," in the sense of being opposed to the State, to public affairs, or even to the status quo, to capitalist society. On the contrary, when the Labor Court was created in the early 1930s, it already positioned itself as an instrument for the pacification of conflicts between capital and labor – that is, an instrument of capitalist society. So there is nothing transgressive, nothing leftist in the sense that is attributed to the word, so it's hard to understand much, except as a way of disqualifying the discourse, this assertion.

Moreover, it seems to me that this has been used: decisions that go against the interests of large companies or the State are classified as "leftist," while those that endorse them receive no epithet, they are not labeled, as if "right-wing" did not exist. There is what is right for those who receive the decision and what is leftist, which ends up being equivalent, in the view of these people, to being wrong. We need to reclaim the meaning of left and right, which comes from the French Revolution, to understand how wrong it is to talk about this when facing well-founded judicial decisions.

Sul21: You are a member of the National Forum in Defense of the Rights of Workers Affected by Outsourcing. How might the liberalization of outsourcing as a core activity, which is currently being processed in the Senate, affect categories that do not currently operate under this logic?

Valdete Souto Severo: In many ways, because the approval of the bill means allowing outsourcing in all activities, and this will further dismantle the possibility of union organization, which is already quite affected, either because there is no job security in Brazil, or because outsourcing already exists in several sectors. In addition to all the consequences that we have been insistently demonstrating—reduced wages, precarious working conditions, an increase in the number of workplace accidents, and the impossibility of enjoying certain rights, such as vacations, because if the service provider changes every two years, for example, people end up not enjoying their right to vacation.

Valdete Souto Severo: That's right, it's an attack coming from all sides. We had very bad Supreme Court decisions for labor law at the end of last year, we had laws passed, including a terrible bill that was conceived by the government, so if it's approved in Parliament, it won't be vetoed, and all of them with the same intention: to end rights – not only – but especially labor rights. And outsourcing seems to me, and I've been saying this for a long time, to be the main element of this dismantling.

That's because outsourcing, allowing multiple companies within the same company, or the existence of a company without employees, is to fragment the workforce and suppress rights, as I said before. So, if we allow outsourcing to grow even more than it already does today, we will encounter much less resistance to altering other rights, such as the right to limited working hours, vacations, the 13th-month salary, etc.

It has been very difficult to fight against this, which is why I think this attack I suffered is not isolated, because any decision, any public demonstration, any act in defense of labor rights has been attacked. Always attacked with great ferocity and in an attempt to delegitimize this discourse, which is not a new discourse. The construction of labor rights is something that has been done in Brazil and other Western countries for at least two centuries; it is something that history has shown to be indispensable, including so that those people who are fighting against labor rights today can live well. Without being afraid all the time, without having to lock themselves in gated communities and travel in armored cars. If we remove social rights, what happens is that the entire level of sociability, social relations in general, not just that of the worker with their employer, end up losing as well. We end up living in a society that is more precarious, more violent, more miserable, and this affects everyone.

What Brazil is experiencing now, Europe has also been experiencing since the beginning of this second decade. We have been following the changes in labor legislation in Italy, Spain, and Portugal; it's always the same laws. This bill that was presented at the end of the year by the government is, to some extent, a copy of legislation that was enacted in those countries. This demonstrates that it is an international movement, which is why it is so difficult to fight against it. It's not something isolated, it's not something unique to us. We are following a set of rules, rules that we know very well dictate. It's something bigger than the government of a specific country, like ours.

On the other hand, it seems to me that this difficulty brings us a positive element. In recent decades, there has been a dismantling of labor governments. Since the 1990s, we haven't been able to overcome this idea that we have to retreat in terms of protecting social rights. The advantage now is that the cards are on the table; there's no more disguise. It's something overt. If it's overt, it gives us elements to fight with more force. So now we know what the objective is, we have the elements and we have enough rationality for it—many works, many articles, many statements from people connected or not to the area of ​​labor law. It seems to me that now we have the conditions to create a discourse that demonstrates, including with historical facts, the fallacy of this attempt to remove labor rights and this discourse that says if you remove rights the economy improves. Historically, it's not like that. The economy is mainly sustained by strong social rights that allow people to consume, walk the streets, without the terror of barbarism always lurking.

Sul21: There is also a kind of vilification of the Labor Courts in Brazil today. Is this something specific to this era?

Valdete Souto Severo: Yes. And it's another interesting thing, how we manage to distort the discourse, because Labor Courts are created and act to maintain a supposed social peace. This is even stated in the explanatory memorandum of the Labor Courts. What does this mean? Social peace means that labor continues to be exploited by capital, but that both the worker and the employer are at peace with this situation of exploitation. So, historically, the Labor Courts are an instrument for preserving capital. Of course, they preserve capital by imposing some limits on the logic of capital, because historically it has been observed – not only in Brazil – that if social forces are allowed to act freely, capital ends up annihilating labor itself. Consuming the worker's strength until there is no more labor power left to exploit. So, the Labor Courts as an institution preserve this relationship without intending to alter it. That's what I want to make clear: there is nothing transgressive about the Labor Courts; what they do is allow everything to remain as it is.

There is an attempt to eliminate, to extinguish labor courts; the budget cuts we experienced last year are a clear demonstration of this. Especially because, in his justifications, the current minister, then rapporteur, Ricardo Barros, makes it very clear that he is cutting expenses due to the actions of the labor courts. It's a discourse that, besides being false, has a very narrow view of things. I even have business friends who comment, are they realizing that if they eliminate labor courts, there will be no more restraint, no more space for dialogue, no more environment for conciliation between capital and labor, and that this may be much worse for employers than for those who depend on work to survive? We should be building a discourse of criticism of the perhaps very passive role of the labor courts, which, it is true, today, in this scenario of setbacks and attacks on social rights, has given good lessons. But historically, it has nothing effectively protective in the sense of altering any measure of exploitation of labor by capital. But of course, now is not the time to reflect on this. The time has come to realize that this institution is necessary both for those who work in the workforce and for those who exploit that workforce.

Valdete Souto Severo: Another tremendous fallacy, because in reality we don't have a fundamental right, which is the right against dismissal. The absence of this guarantee against dismissal compromises the exercise of all other labor rights. If we consider the reality of some European countries, for example, to dismiss someone there must be a legitimate reason, and this reason will be discussed in the Judiciary. In Brazil, we still say that it's possible to dismiss someone without stating a reason. Nobody can exercise any right during their employment, nor object to reduced working hours, increased hours, nothing, because they can be dismissed at any moment without any justification. So, if there is no exercise of rights during the employment relationship, and if even after the relationship ends there is still a statute of limitations, we cannot say, no matter how many protective labor laws are created (and we don't have that many), that there is a very protective labor law in Brazil.

Sul21: You also wrote a book titled "Elements for the Transgressive Use of Labor Law." In a time when hard-won labor rights seem to be called into question, what would these elements be?

Valdete Souto Severo: The book deals with transgression not in the sense of disobeying the law, but rather in the sense of complying with labor laws to their fullest extent. My analysis is that if we take everything that labor law dictates seriously, in the reality of Brazil, for example, the system itself will prove unsustainable. It proposes a path forward for those who are dissatisfied with the system as we have it today and with the exploitation of labor by capital; one measure is the unrestricted application of labor rights.

What we perceive, observing the jurisprudence, is that labor rights are not fully applicable, and the proposals I make there are, for example, that prescription not be pronounced until there is an effective guarantee of employment – ​​which is actually a thesis that has already been approved by labor judges, nationally – that the maximum limit of 8 hours per day be effectively respected, therefore, that no legislation that weakens this limit, which is the maximum work per day, be applied. In addition to other specific issues, but which are actually examples of what can be done for a transgressive use, in a more psychoanalytic sense of transgression, as an effective application of labor rights. Everything starts from the premise of labor law as an instrument of the society we have; it doesn't deviate from the rule, it exists so that things remain as they are, but it imposes limits. And these limits are not taken seriously precisely because if they were, they would strain the system. The idea behind the book is this: if we want to put pressure on the system without completely destroying it, without creating a scorched earth policy, let's start with the full implementation of labor rights.

Sul21: What would be the solution to implement this?

Valdete Souto Severo: The solution is simpler than we think: apply the law. If the Constitution says the maximum is 8 hours, anyone who works beyond 8 hours must receive overtime pay. If the Constitution says there must be a healthy work environment, unhealthy working conditions must be rejected as something natural. We have to stop considering the violation of labor rights as merely, as some lawsuits say, a breach of contract. It is not. In fact, it is a breach of an agreement that was made, which is necessary to live minimally well. The proposal is to apply labor law without compromising, as has been done, without allowing, for example, settlements that imply waiver, and so on.