Crise no sindicalismo : a reforma trabalhista de 2017 no contexto do capitalismo global

Abstract

The 2017 labor reform in Brazil imposed itself, suppressing workers' rights and thus subjugating their most direct instrument of representation and defense: the unions. It is necessary to understand how these measures, to a lesser or greater degree, have unbalanced the relationship between capital and labor, contributing to the deterioration of the structural unemployment scenario through the flexibilization of labor laws with the consequent loss of the rights associated with them. It is necessary to point out that, throughout the historical process of trade unionism, workers' union representation has failed to create mechanisms that would bring them closer to understanding the union as a force for guaranteeing better working conditions, wages and quality of life. Although at other times several of these representations have made important progress, these successful collective actions were not enough to build an organic structure capable of opposing the 2017 labour reform, largely due to the collapse of values linked to socialization in the world of labor, which imply a capacity to build identities anchored in a political culture specific to the working classes. The Law 13.467/2017 was passed by the Michel Temer government without much resistance in Congress. In order to gain a deeper sociological understanding of what happened, however, it is necessary to situate the reform within the broader framework of the historical transformations of global capitalism in recent decades. This is what we will do in this paper.