Partial strikes of 1978 The denunciation that the military regime, in 1973, had masked the inflation indexes, damaging the metalworkers' wages in 34.1%, was the motivation for the São Bernardo Metalworkers Union to start a campaign aiming the replacement of the 1973 indexes.
On May 12, workers at Saab-Scania went on strike, based on a spontaneous decision by themselves, who were unhappy with the perceived rates, which turned out to be even lower than the official rate (39%), because they came stripped of the anticipations. At Ford, in São Bernardo, the movement began on May 15, started by the machining and tooling workers, and later reached from the engine manufacturing sector to the painting section, paralyzing the entire production for a week.'
On March 18, the Regional Labor Court (Tribunal Regional do Trabalho
- TRT) decided for the illegality of the strikes, however, the strike movement still reached a significant number of metallurgical industries in the ABC Paulista, among them Mercedes, Chrysler, Villares, Brastemp, Pirelli, Cofap, Philips, Otis, General Electric, among other large, medium and small companies, also finding repercussions in São Paulo, reaching Toshiba, Hyster, Orniex, Brasprensas, among others. In anticipation of imminent strikes, some companies informed their workers that they would follow whatever was established in the agreement between workers and employers in the automotive industry, which was signed on May 30 of that year. Negotiated between the São Bernardo Metalworkers union and the National Association of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers (Associação Nacional dos Fabricantes de Veículos Automotores'' - ANFAVEA), this agreement covered about 65 thousand workers and contemplated the following adjustment indexes: 11% increase, granted in June (5.5%) and October (5.5%) besides a wage anticipation of 13.5%, granted in August (4.5%), December (4.5%) and February (4.5%). The agreement also made it possible for the workers from small and medium-sized companies in the auto parts industry to strike during the second semester of 1978, in order to obtain the same concessions valid for the auto industry. In parallel, the employers began a series of layoffs and, foreseeing the outbreak of a new confrontation in the auto industry at the time of the 1979 wage campaign, they intensified their preventive action, with the elaboration of a circular by FIESP, containing instructions for the confrontation of strikes. In this document, it was suggested that the companies should not pay for the hours stopped, and in case of a strike, they should prevent the workers from remaining inside the factories. Still at the end of 1978, within this framework of animosity between the employers and the metalworkers, strikes broke out at Villares and Resil. At Villares the movement was triggered in early December, in solidarity with a worker who had been fired after being assaulted by the head of the milling section. With the strike, the company's management began a process of mass dismissals, even affecting the existing workers' committee. After a few days of strike action, with the intensification of reprisals and the increase of layoffs, they returned to work. The strike at Resil, however, had a different outcome. Demanding a 30% wage increase, the workers, faced with the bosses' refusal, stopped work. The company, following FIESP's suggestion, laid off workers and prevented the strikers from remaining inside the plant, and the workers began to meet at the union. On the eighth day of the strike, the workers, fearing that the movement would be undermined, since the company was hiring workers to replace the strikers, picketed in front of the plant's gate. Resil eventually gave in to the movement, calling Lula to negotiate, and granted a 15% raise for the one to three minimum wage range, 11% for the three to six minimum wage range, and 7% for the six to ten minimum wage range, in addition to an increase in the wage floor and premium at the beginning of the year. In accordance with the resolutions of this congress, the union started to make workers meetings by companies, aiming to supply the absence of the union inside the factories. In late January, the metalworkers unions in the state established their basic demands: 34.1% wage increase above the official index (to replace wage losses); wage floor equal to three minimum wages; validity of the Collective Labor Convention from April to October 1979, so that it could coincide with the base date of the metalworkers in the capital,
Osasco and
Guarulhos; recognition and stability for union delegates (one for each group of five hundred workers); reduction of the working day to forty hours per week and quarterly readjustments. As the valid base date for the metallurgical workers in the ABC region approached, the businessmen became more cautious, fearing a new strike outbreak. A confidential circular from the Machinery Industry Union of the State of São Paulo (
Sindicato da Indústria de Máquinas do Estado de São Paulo - SIMESP) proposed that any direct negotiations or agreements with the workers should be avoided and that negotiations should be carried out by the entity representing the economic category to which the industry belonged. Another circular suggested increasing the stock of the companies, increasing the bosses' control over the workers and resorting to the "police garrison to remain on standby" in case of "imminent danger". The São Bernardo Metalworkers Union responded by advising the workers not to work overtime, thus avoiding an increase in production, and to be careful with the bosses, foremen and supervisors. The Metalworkers Federation accepted FIESP's proposal, validating it for 29 unions of the interior; the unions of the ABC, Santa Bárbara D'Oeste and
Santos did not sign the agreement. The agreement in question established the rates of 63% for those earning one to three minimum wages, 57% from three to ten minimum wages and 44% for those earning more than ten minimum wages. Differently from the mobilizations of the previous year, this time the strike was general. A wage commission was created, which had an important role, together with the union leadership, in the preparation and organization of the strike. The movement also found repercussions in the interior of the state, with strikes in
São José dos Campos,
Caçapava,
Jacareí,
Jundiaí,
Campinas and
Santa Bárbara d'Oeste. On March 15, the strike was judged illegal by the TRT, which also rejected the creation of a shop steward, one of the main demands of the movement. Nevertheless, on the fourth day of the strike, there were about 170,000 workers paralyzed in ABC and an assembly was held in the
Vila Euclides Stadium, in which the continuity of the strike was reaffirmed and the creation of a strike fund was announced by
Djalma Bom. After the creation of the strike fund, a national campaign of solidarity with the strikers was initiated, through the collection of financial resources and food for the paralyzed workers, which had the strong support of the Church. On the tenth day of the strike, the Ministry of Labor proposed a protocol of intentions that established the creation of a tripartite commission to study, within 45 days, the index of readjustment, the prohibition of dismissal to strikers and the payment of the stopped hours to be later discounted in installments. The protocol would be taken to the workers and their approval would result in an immediate return to work. The mother Church became the center of meetings of the union's leaders and the wages commission after the intervention, showing the support of the Church - especially the Operária Pastoral, directed by
Cláudio Hummes - to the ABC Paulista workers movement. The strike movement, however, went into ebb, as despite the continuity of the strike, there was a considerable return to work, which caused the union leadership and the wage commission to reevaluate the movement and visualize the impossibility of its continuation. In the general assembly held on March 27, after a new evaluation by the strike command, a provisional agreement was reached with the employers, which Lula and the command took for approval in this new assembly: the workers would give a 45-day truce, a period in which, through new negotiations with the employers, an attempt would be made to obtain a more satisfactory wage index than the one reached by the metalworkers in the countryside; otherwise, the ABC metalworkers would go on strike again. On May 1, a public act was held on
International Workers' Day, with the presence of more than 130,000 workers. With the imminence of a new general strike, the employers reassessed the direction they had been taking in the negotiations. Lula and the directors of the trade union reaffirmed the importance of resuming the strike, if a new agreement was not reached. On May 12 the agreement between FIESP and the ABC metalworkers was signed, approved in a plebiscite assembly on May 13. The agreement provided for a 63% raise for those earning up to ten minimum wages, to be applied over the March 1978 salary (above ten minimum wages, the index would be equal to the official 44%), and would be valid for companies that granted the average 11% extradisside readjustment in the previous year. For the other indexes, the same from the agreement would be applied as in the agreement made for the countryside unions. There would also be a discount of 50% of the paralyzed days, in five equal and successive installments starting June 10, while the other half would be settled directly between the workers and the companies, not being computed for vacation, 13th salary and paid weekly rest periods.
Metalworkers' general strike of 1980 In November 1979, the military government established a new wage policy, which introduced the semi-annual salary adjustment; created the
National Consumer Price Index (
Índice Nacional de Preços ao Consumidor - INPC) system, fixed by the government; and established differentiated wage ranges: 1.1 of the INPC for those who earned up to three minimum wages, 1.0 for those who earned three to ten minimum wages, 0.8 for those who earned between ten and twenty minimum wages, and 0.5 for those who earned more than twenty minimum wages. The new wage policy also established a single possibility of direct negotiation between workers and employers, where a quantum, exceeding the INPC, could be established as productivity. Among workers, such measure caused the perception that the new wage policy removed the right of direct negotiation with employers. The first assembly was held in three sessions, during February 29 and March 1, with the participation of around 4,500 workers. A mobilization command was organized with 466 workers, which would have the responsibility of preparing and organizing the following assemblies. In the second assembly, on March 16, the workers decided that during the negotiations no overtime hours would be worked and the production pace in the factories would be slowed down. There were 215 meetings by factories in the Union and 65 assemblies at the entrances and exits of the shifts, totaling almost three hundred preparatory assemblies for the demands list. Among the demands presented, the adoption of the wage floor and the recognition of the shop stewards were the ones that gained most attention in the campaign. Negotiations began on March 18. Instead of the 15% above the INPC, requested by the workers, FIESP offered 3.65%, which was raised to 5% three days before the strike began. The workers' demands concerning the wage floor - FIESP offered a floor of Cr$5,904, less than half the amount demanded - the stability, the reduction of the workday, the shop stewards and the management control were rejected. In São Bernardo, the assembly included sixty thousand workers; in Santo André, around forty thousand and in São Caetano, on the following day, two thousand workers made the decision. The TRT's judgment made the metalworkers in some cities in the interior accept its terms, ending the strike, Foreseeing the longevity of the strike, they began, with the support of the Church, to collect food, as well as financial resources for the support of the strikers through a strike fund. In São Bernardo and Santo André, however, the workers remained paralyzed. It is estimated that of the 287,000 metalworkers in the ABC and the
interior of São Paulo, 170,000 workers were still on strike, of which 127,000 were from São Bernardo and Diadema, representing 90% of the category in the region. In Santo André, 43,000 workers remained paralyzed, representing 70% of the category in the municipality. On April 17, the military government intervened in the
São Bernardo do Campo and
Santo André unions and dismissed their leaderships. The then Minister of Labor, Murilo Macedo, who had already intervened in other unions, also had the strike leaders and other personalities representing liberal associations arrested, among them Lula, Djalma Bom and Devanir Ribeiro from São Bernardo; José Cicote, Ernesto Sencini, Isaías V. da Cunha, Orlando Francelino Mota and José Timóteo da Silva, from Sando André; José Ferreira da Silva, union militant from São Caetano; Arnaldo Gonçalves, president of the Santos metalworkers union; Afonso Deléllis, former metalworkers union militant from São Paulo; José Carlos Dias, from the Justice and Peace Commission; Dalmo Dallari, jurist; Ricardo Zarattini, amnesty; and Antonio Roberto Espinosa, journalist and former guerrilla. Soon after receiving the news of the intervention, Expedito Soares instructed the workers to go to the City Hall; if it was closed, they would go to the mother Church and, if that was not possible, they would use the other churches in the ABC and São Paulo. Entering the third week of the strike, the metalworkers tried to keep the momentum of the movement. By now they had added to their previous demands the demand for the release of prisoners and an end to the intervention in the trade unions. The government was getting tougher, restricting the possible meeting spaces, among which only the churches were left. The businessmen, in turn, reinforced the reprisals. The conflicts between police and workers intensified and a movement of sparse return to work could already be perceived. Unable to hold assemblies in the Vila Euclides and Vila Jaçatuba Stadiums or in the Paço Municipal, the workers began to hold them in the mother Church and to maintain mobilization through neighborhood meetings. The community and regional meetings allowed the substitute strike leaders to make a more accurate assessment of the strikers' willingness to continue the strike. As a result, the links with the associations provided the beleaguered militants with a reliable connection to the bases to obtain information regarding the level of commitment and material needs of the strikers. As the thirtieth day of the strike approached, the employers intensified their reprisals against the strike movement, stating that those who would not return to work would be fired under the allegation of abandoning their jobs. The movement ebbed, with a considerable return to work and an ever decreasing number of workers present at the assemblies. After the impact of May 1, new demonstrations of significant return to work began to appear. In early May, the metalworkers in Santo André decided to return to work and ended their participation in the movement. On that same day, in São Bernardo, there was a fierce confrontation between metalworkers and police troops, which lasted several hours, after the assembly held in the morning, in the mother Church, decided once more to continue the strike. The pressure on this strike and its adverse outcome for workers had a major impact on the national trade union movement in the early 1980s. The level of repression and intensity of conflict between workers and employers, as well as the economic recession, resulted in a 62% reduction in the number of strikes in 1980. == Consequences ==