Skip to main content
Morning Star Conference
Brazilian unions aren't lying down under attacks from Michel Temer's regime
Brazil's Labour Minister Caio Luiz de Almeida Vieira de Mello, behind, stands with President Michel Temer

In Brazil, the far-right government of President Michel Temer had a victory over the country’s workers and unions last week, but the fighting spirit of the Brazilian working class seems to be undaunted.

Brazil has national elections on October 7 of this year, with a runoff on October 28 if necessary to decide the presidency. The current government is extremely unpopular and there are a huge number of parties contending the presidential elections. The degree to which worker and popular discontent can be translated into electoral victories for the left is now the big question.

Last year, Temer’s allies in Congress passed a series of devastating measures aimed at completely trashing workers’ rights on the job.

However, in contention last week was not the whole package, but a specific reform having to do with employers’ obligation to deduct union dues from workers’ pay.

In short, the government wants to drop that practice, which would force unions to talk to their members one by one to persuade them to pay their dues.

In a situation in which the government is doing its best to make it impossible for unions to defend the interests of their members, this is a major blow to union financing.

The National Conference of Water Transport, Air Transport, Fishing and Port Workers had challenged the constitutionality of this aspect, but on June 29, the Supreme Court, in a split decision — (six to three) — let the policy stand. The effect is that employers are no longer required to deduct union dues and forward them to the unions.

The impact could be similar to last week’s decision of the US Supreme Court in the Janus decision.

Brazilian unions, other grassroots organisations and the left quickly denounced this decision as destructive to the interests of the workers. The left-led CTB union federation blasted the decision, saying that the ending of obligatory union dues deductions is “one more capitalist blow against the union movement, guided by the objective of weakening, and, if possible, making invisible and destroying, working-class organisations to make possible an agenda of restoring the neoliberal agenda which involves lowering wages, reducing rights, and making relations of production more precarious.”

The CTB and other labour and people’s organisations have vowed to fight on, including in the electoral arena and on the streets.

Will the Brazilian working class be up to the challenge? The signs are positive.

Recently there was a massive and militant response of transport workers to the new policy of the state oil company, Petrobras, of letting diesel prices float upward. This was immediately followed by strike action by petroleum workers; the two things in combination led to the resignation of Petrobras head Pedro Parente.

Labour and the left see the government’s agenda as focused on the privatisation of the Pre-Sal, Brazil’s enormous offshore oil deposits, and are determined to block such a move.

Now the privatisation of the country’s electrical system is on the government’s agenda, and working class and labour opposition is also mounting.

By far the most popular candidate for the presidential elections in October is ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party (PT).

However, he is currently imprisoned after a farcical “trial without evidence” on the basis of dubious charges of corruption. The left is still demanding his exoneration and release but has put forth several candidates of its own in the meanwhile, including Manuela D’Avila of the Communist Party of Brazil.

However Jair Bolsonaro, an extreme rightist who openly praises the country’s military dictatorship which ruled with an iron hand from 1964 to 1985, also has a strong showing in the polls. A Bolsonaro win would be very bad not only for workers and unions, but for women, LGBT people, the poor, indigenous and Afro-Brazilians and the environment. This won’t be a dull electoral season; as in the United States this year, absolutely everything is at stake.

Emile Schepers is a veteran civil and immigrant rights activist. He was was born in South Africa and has a doctorate in cultural anthropology from Northwestern University. He has worked as a researcher and activist in urban, working-class communities in Chicago since 1966. He is active in the struggle for immigrant rights, in solidarity with the Cuban Revolution and a number of other issues. This article appeared in People’s World.

Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Afrikaners from South Africa arrive, May 12, 2025, at Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Va.
Features / 19 May 2025
19 May 2025

The plan is to stigmatise and destabilise South Africa in preparation for breaking it up while creating a confused and highly racialised atmosphere around immigration in the US to aid in denying rights to non-white refugees, explains EMILE SCHEPERS

Features / 9 February 2025
9 February 2025
EMILE SCHEPERS looks at the history of dispossession that has prompted the South African government's land reforms
Supporters of President Nicolas Maduro chants slogans during
Features / 18 September 2019
18 September 2019
The resurrection of the Inter American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance against Venezuela could lead to an armed invasion of the oil-rich country, writes EMILE SCHEPERS
Members of the special force's ‘Kaibiles’ — a company
Features / 5 July 2019
5 July 2019
Ravaged by years of war, genocide and oppression of the indigenous and the poor, Guatemala is no safe haven for migrants, says EMILE SCHEPERS
Similar stories
SCARING TRUMP: (Left to right) Brazil’s President Luiz Ina
Features / 24 February 2025
24 February 2025
The towering figures of the North American right and the South American left are set to clash this summer as Brazil hosts Brics, an alliance Trump is determined to smash, reports TONY BURKE
Lula making a speech in Diadema, Sao Paulo, launching subsid
Books / 22 November 2024
22 November 2024
RON JACOBS appreciates the suspenseful style of a biography of the path to Lula’s first presidency, and the lessons it contains for working class self-organisation