The 1906 Porto Alegre general strike, also known as the 21-day strike, was the first general strike in the history of Rio Grande do Sul. Between 3 and 21 October, about five thousand workers abandoned their work, demanding the reduction of the workday to eight hours. The movement was initiated by anarchists, who had started a strike on August 26 at Jacob Aloys Friedrichs marmoraria demanding the eight-hour day. Soon after the strike statement, they founded the Marbles Union and called the other workers in Porto Alegre to join the movement. Throughout September, the city's working class remained solidarity to paralyze marble production, and on October 3, several sectors decided to declare themselves on strike.
Faced with the paralysis of several sectors - including metallurgical, stevedores, masons, tram workers and textiles, the local entrepreneurship met under the leadership of Alberto Bins to establish an agreement that granted the workers a nine hour workday, which initially was not accepted by the strikers. During the strike, the socialists Francisco Xavier da Costa and Carlos Cavaco emerged as leaders of the movement, bringing the anarchists in their direction and driving the creation of the Workers' Federation of Rio Grande do Sul (FORGS), which would become the most important organization of the Gaúcha working class during the first Republic. The bosses remained uncompromising and the strike began to empty themselves from October 17, when several workers, pressured by the economic difficulties arising from so much time paralyzed, began to return to work, accepting the nine-hour workday. On the 21st, the local press declared the movement to have ended. Despite the original demand was not met, the reduction of the working day was seen as a partial achievement, and the strike helped to strengthen class consciousness and the organization of Porto Alegre's workers.
Background According to historian Joan Bak, the 1906 general strike in Porto Alegre was initiated in a context in which at least three elements stand out: the introduction of new modalities of production, which disrupted the familiar habits of artisan labor; the growing introduction of the female workforce in the work environment; and the transformation of hermetic ethnic communities into more heterogeneous communities, which were to be recognized as a working class.
Until the beginning of the twentieth century, in most Porto Alegre companies, a typical organization of manufacturing workshops, with a relatively small number of employees and a hierarchy of functions based on talent and in the time of professional learning. This working environment brought possibilities of hierarchical ascension to employees, as well as allowed a greater proximity between them and their bosses, favoring paternalist social relations. The workers of the first workshops and industries were almost always qualified male artisans, in general European immigrants or descendants. Entrepreneurs generally hired only fellow countrymen in an attempt to accentuate ethnic solidarity and camouflage class differences. Linguistic barriers eventually isolated the immigrant workers from those that spoke Portuguese, reinforcing cultural ties between bosses and employees. Black people and mestiços, even if they formed an important part of the population of the city, were relegated to unqualified and poorly paid work, while many entrepreneurs hired only workers of European origin.
In the early 1900s, an expansion of industry and the most traditional social relations between boss and employee have begun to modify with the emergence of large factories. As a result of this process, some craftsmen blamed the machines for having taken them from their former work and complained that they were working more and earning less. Establishments which employed more than 50 workers became more common, concentrated especially in metallurgy, clothing production, furniture and food. According to Bak, "these establishments have become a first battlefield of conflicts for changes in social production relations", including the first strikes, until then always circumscribed to only single establishments. With the appearance and expansion of new factories, the female workforce also became increasingly employed. At the socks and corset factory of the Fabril Porto-Alegrense company, one of the largest and most mechanized of the city, three-quarters of the workforce was composed of women, who worked for low wages and in unhealthy conditions.
As a consequence of this initial process of industrialization, Porto Alegre went through rapid urban growth. The population of the city, from 52,000 inhabitants in 1890, had doubled in 1910, and new urban districts have also emerged in that period. The expansion of the city was mainly to the north and east. The Fourth District Zone - current neighborhoods of São João and Navegantes - emerged as the first industrial region of the city, where there was a working class presence.
As a result of these rapid transformations, dense and hermetic ethnic communities began to transform into more heterogeneous communities with mixture of ethnic and class identities. While at first the organizations of the working class were marked by ethnicity, as early as 1896, the International Working League congregated Portuguese, German and Italian speakers. At the beginning of the twentieth century, anarchist militants began to organize unions by occupation, although at first, some offices were identified with certain ethnicities - the Italians predominated among shoemakers; the Germans, in turn, among the metallurgists, Hatters and Joiners.
The strike Marbles strike
On August 26, 1906, three marble workers of Jacob Aloys Friedrichs - Henrique Faccini, Carlos Jansson and Arthur do Vale Quaresma - gave him a letter in which they demanded the eight-hour workday. The demand of the eight-hour workday was not a novelty in the labor movement: gaucho socialists had already demanded it since 1897, when the policy appeared in the program of the Rio Grande do Sul Socialist Party; also in 1906, between April 15 and 22, the First Brazilian Workers' Congress was held in the Rio de Janeiro, which placed the fight for eight hours on the agenda. Militants of the labor movement, especially anarchists, considered that the eight-hour journey would help reduce unemployment and allow workers to organize and educate themselves in their free time, making their class consciousness grow. Although Rio Grande do Sul had not sent representatives to the Workers' Congress, the Anarchists of Porto Alegre took note of the proposals approved at the meeting, and inspired by Congress, decided to start a movement for eight hours. Henrique Faccini and André Arjonas, signatories of the letter delivered to Friedrichs, were anarchist militants.
The marble workers, as well as other craftsmen, possessed their own tools and were qualified, which made them difficult to replace. However, they worked 11 hour days. In the letter delivered to Friedrichs, the marble workers were identified as a working class and justified their demands arguing that this measure would give them "some time for moral and intellectual development". The employees of Friedrichs believed that he was the most suitable for introducing the eight-hour workday in the city and expected a favorable response from their boss, otherwise they were willing to take a "different resolution".
Despite the respectful and cordial tone of the letter, which did not display hostility or revolutionary ardor, considering Friedrichs as an "honest man" and "laborious and acquiescent with everything that is fair and that has always treated them well". The threat of a "different resolution" irritated the boss. The next morning, August 27, Friedrichs found only one employee in the marmoraria; all others, even apprentices, were absent. Through an informant who declared himself neutral, he knew that his employees would only return to work after they know the answer to the request presented the day before. Then there was a deadlock: Friedrichs said that while his employees "did not go back to work and wait calmly" their response, "could wait indefinitely." He established their return to work as a condition of his response to employees and stated that the issue "no longer revolved around the eight-hour workday," with which Friedrichs had already "conformed intimately," but for his "authority of Master and employer".
The strikers stayed firm for a week. At the end of this period, Friedrichs reported that he was to reduce the working day to nine hours and imposed an ultimatum: if workers rejected this proposal, they should remove their instruments from work until seventeen hours the next day. The marble workers named a commission to reach an agreement with Friedrichs, who remained uncompromising. The Commission, in turn, stated to the boss that workers would go on strike while their demands were not met. On the next day, a group of strikers tried to withdraw their tools from the workshop, but the boss refused to deliver them and asked for police protection. The workers convinced the police that they were only claiming what already belonged to them and, when the police gave up, they entered quietly in the establishment, they collected their belongings and left.
On September 10, the socialist Francisco Xavier da Costa offered to mediate the conflict, writing Friedrichs and arguing that it would be "absolutely impossible to reach an agreement between you and your former workers, provided that you do not have the benevolence of meeting what they have requested, that is - the reduction of labor to eight hours daily." Despite being Brazilian and mestiço, Xavier da Costa had ties with the German-speaking community and had already acted as mediator between bosses and employees in the strike of the wiring and tissues company in the previous year. For these reasons - and also in an attempt to strengthen his leadership in the local labor movement and block the advancement of the anarchists - he tried to seek a negotiated exit to the conflict.
During the month of September, almost all the workers of the city remained in solidarity with the strikers. On September 25, nine marble workers, including Henry Faccini, embarked down to Rio de Janeiro, where they would be employed in the eight-hour regime. Representatives from various associations of workers attended the port in a demonstration of support for the marble workers.
Generalization of strike