“A porta da senzala abriu, nega”: racismo, divisão sexual do trabalho e direitos trabalhistas a partir da experiência sindical das trabalhadoras domésticas

Abstract

This dissertation aims to investigate how the struggle of domestic workers for rights, within the scope of union militancy. It will be central in this analysis the legal question, which permeates the domestic claims for labor rights. We will question the neutrality sometimes emanated in the practice of law, attributing to it a class character and reflecting on the possibilities of transformation that it allows, from the very legal framework that encompasses domestic employment. The specific objectives of the work are, first of all, to rescue the enslaved inheritance of domestic employment, including the consequences of the racism that justified slavery generated in the working conditions to which domestic workers are subjected. We will note that the domestic category is composed mostly of black women, and therefore suffers from a domination that arises from both the gender and racial aspects. Understanding that the domestic workers are inserted in the context of the Brazilian working class, we will see that the social relations of class, race and gender are intertwined in a kind of ball, named by Kergoat of consubstantiality. Another specific objective of the work is to look at the union militancy of these workers, based on the local experience of the Union of Domestic Workers and Workers of João Pessoa and Region (Sintrader). We will unveil the history of the Union. We will examine the history of the organization as well as its main rights claims, paying attention to the network of relations that the Union develops with other political groups, and considering the limits imposed by the existing material conditions. The text is constantly in dialogue with the narratives of the members of the Board of Directors of the Union, subject to the field research conducted in the years 2015 and 2016. The collected material originates mainly from the interviews conducted in this period, conducted by quantitative-qualitative methodology. The method of analysis chosen was the materialist-dialectic, and is reflected in the choices of the theoretical framework of research, of Marxist orientation. Thus, the theoreticians elected for the discussions of all the objectives of this work are inserted in some way in the critical Marxist theory. In general, the conclusion of the research refers to the factors that generate the historical inequality experienced by the category of domestic workers in terms of labor rights. These factors are related to the very nature of law, inseparable from the capitalist mode of production; To the question of gender, which explains the sexual division of labor in which domestic work is inserted as reproductive labor; And finally, to the racial question, which since slavery perpetuates a cycle of exclusion of the black population in Brazil.