Fernando Alcoforado*
Brazil has an economically active population of 90.6 million of which 36.3%, or 32.9 million of the private sector workers have work contracts, with a formal contract and 44% or 40 million workers are in an informal situation, that is, they do not enjoy labor rights. Unemployment is 12.7 million workers and the economically active underutilized population is 27.6 million workers. This means that the number of discouraged workers who have stopped seeking work is 14.9 million workers. These figures show that the situation of the working class in Brazil is very serious. 23.3% of the economically active population are self-employed in providing services. This situation was exacerbated by the economic crisis that broke out in Brazil since 2014 and caused the Brazilian economy to face the biggest recession in Brazil’s history. Workers in Brazil face two gigantic problems. The first is represented by the inability of the Brazilian economic system to generate the necessary jobs for the economically active population and the second concerns the precariousness of the work imposed by the neoliberal economic model.
For the Brazilian economic system to generate the necessary jobs for the economically active population, as a first step, the federal government must overcome the current recessive crisis, the main cause of unemployment and the underutilization of Brazilian workers, immediately executing a large program of public works (energy, transport, housing, basic sanitation, etc.) to raise the population’s employment and income levels and, as a consequence, to promote the expansion of household consumption resulting from an increase in wages and incomes of companies with investments in public works. The federal government should attract the private sector to invest in economic infrastructure (energy, transportation and communications) and social infrastructure (education, health, housing and basic sanitation) that require resources of R$ 2.5 trillion to reduce the cost of its logistics. The increase in the wage bill and the adoption of a credit policy will encourage the consumer to buy more. The public works program would increase productive capacity and increase investment in industry, contributing to the heating of commercial activity and services, as well as raising the levels of government tax collection.
In addition to the public works program, the federal government should draw up an economic plan that would contribute to the resumption of Brazil’s development that presents for the population and the productive sectors a perspective to overcome the current crisis and to resume economic growth. It is the inexistence of a governmental plan of development one of the factors that lead to the immobility of the private sector in the realization of investments in Brazil leading to true paralysis. The development plan should guide and coordinate the country’s companies that, organized in networks, and aided by trade, technology and credit policies, can compete successfully in the national and global economy. Taking into account the speech of the economy minister of the government Jair Bolsonaro, Paulo Guedes, who is a fundamentalist of neoliberalism hardly the federal government will take an active role as inducer of economic growth by developing a development plan with the adoption of the measures presented above to promote the reactivation of the economy and the increase of employment levels in Brazil. According to the Bolsonaro government program, the starting point for combating unemployment is to tackle the country’s fiscal imbalance with the Social Security Reform. The stimulus to investment, growth and job creation would, according to the Bolsonaro government, lead to the reversal of the public deficit, achieved through spending cuts, reduction of tax breaks and sale of public assets. However, they are insufficient measures to reactivate the Brazilian economy.
As for the precariousness of labor relations in Brazil and in the world, it results from the neoliberal policies adopted, as well as the technological advance that led to a reduction in the supply of employment and loss of labor benefits. The forms of precariousness of labor relations are manifold, such as those that have caused the majority of workers to have no work contract, open and veiled unemployment, extension of working hours, intensification of conditions of work, there is the outsourcing of work and there is fragmentation of the working class and the consequent difficulties of organization. As a result, neoliberal policies weakened trade unionism, that is, the organization of workers in the struggle for their interests and rights. The establishment of neoliberalism and technological advance in the world occurred with the purpose of promoting the exponential increase in the appropriation of the economic surplus by the great capital at the expense of the workers.
Without long-lasting ties to the employer, flexible occupations or precarious work change the way the worker receives his or her payment without paid vacation and other benefits. Without fixed working hours and spaces and little predictability about financial income, the precarious worker always runs the risk of becoming indebted as has already occurred in Brazil. They are usually in debt and afraid of losing their income suddenly. The intermittent work of this group becomes a generator of debts, because the needs are more or less constant throughout the year since the worker needs to eat, drink, dress and feed. The loss of rights, not only labor, but civil, cultural, social, economic and political rights is one of the defining characteristics of precarious work. The changes in the structure of the global market combined with the deepening of labor flexibility stimulate the extinction of classic labor rights, intensifying the insecurity and instability of activities. It is a very hard way to work, very raw, without any kind of right or very low intensity of rights, social protection, social and labor security.
The economic crisis that broke out in Brazil in 2014 brought to the workers the weight of the greatest recession in history that made companies, as a first step, decide to dispense workers. In the years of growth that preceded the crisis, profits have multiplied and at the time of recession, companies do not even use a share of retained earnings to maintain employment. On the contrary, they immediately dismiss thousands of workers, as if the right to employment was not a fundamental right for the vast majority of the population, who live on their labor. Neoliberal policies also produced a great process of proletarianisation of broad sectors of the middle class, impoverished by the loss of formal employment and the concentration of income resulting from the policies implemented by the various governments in Brazil.
The Michel Temer government contributed with the neoliberal labor reforms in force and the Jair Bolsonaro government with those that will come to the precariousness of labor relations in Brazil. In Brazil, there is no prospect of a solution to the precarious work during the Jair Bolsonaro administration because the federal government will not take an active role as an inducer of economic growth to promote the reactivation of the economy and raise employment levels in Brazil. On the contrary, what is happening is the aggravation of this situation with the approval of the labor reform by the government Michel Temer and its maintenance by the government Jair Bolsonaro. The president of the Republic Jair Bolsonaro who voted as a federal deputy in favor of the labor reform that ended with 100 items of CLT, claims that it is better to have precarious employment than to have nothing. His proposal to combat the unemployment drama calls for the creation of a “green and yellow” labor portfolio with less labor rights. This proposal foresees that every young person entering the labor market will be able to choose between an employment contract based on the traditional blue work permit, which guarantees all labor rights, or opt for the green and yellow work portfolio, and with this, lose a number of labor rights.
The workers have no choice but to strengthen their trade union organizations and to coordinate with civil society organizations to try to reverse the current neoliberal labor reforms through their representatives in Parliament and in the future to fight to change the correlation of forces in Parliament and to elect a President of the Republic committed to the interests of the workers. In order to cope with the technological advance, the action of the workers should be directed to fight for the current or future federal government to adopt public policies that encourage entrepreneurial ventures not eliminated by the technological advance such as those of the Creative Economy that combines the creation, production and marketing of creative goods of a cultural nature and innovation. In addition, adopt policies to encourage the Social and Solidarity Economy to support the unemployed, which is a different way of generating work and income in various sectors, be it community banks, credit cooperatives, family agriculture cooperatives, fair trade, exchange clubs, etc., as well as an income transfer program for the general workers facing the unemployment problem which is a social assistance system through which all the citizens of a country, being employed or not, would receive from the government a fixed monthly amount.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 79, holder of the CONFEA / CREA System Medal of Engineering Merit, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is the author of 14 books addressing issues such as Globalization and Development, Brazilian Economy, Global Warming and Climate Change, The Factors that Condition Economic and Social Development, Energy in the world and The Great Scientific, Economic, and Social Revolutions that Changed the World.
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