The 1978–1980 ABC Paulista strikes were a series of workers' protests that took place in the ABC Region of Brazil, in the context of the redemocratization of Brazil. The strikes marked a resurgence of the Brazilian labor movement after its repression by the military dictatorship between 1968 and 1972.
The strike movement began in 1978 with a series of spontaneous work stoppages in the cities of the ABC Region, especially in the metalworkers' sector. The strikers protested pay-cut policies and demanded independent and autonomous trade unions. After this strike, the labor movement continued to mobilize; the initial strikes were continued and expanded with strikes by metalworkers in 1979 and 1980, as well as among other groups across Brazil (such as bank workers, oil workers, and teachers).
The strikes of 1978–1980 marked the emergence of a new unionism in Brazil, characterized by the types of organization that developed among grassroots workers. These new organizations had both union ties and associations with a network of worker community organizations – especially the Basic Ecclesial Communities (Comunidades Eclesiais de Base - CEBs). The strikes were also characterized by the rise of new union leaders, such as Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Among the working class, particularly those politically opposed to the military regime, the emergence of this new unionism introduced demands whose achievement required the liberalization of institutions. This culminated in the 1980s with the formation of the Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores - PT) and inter-union umbrella organizations such as the Unified Workers' Central (Central Única dos Trabalhadores - CUT) and the General Confederation of Workers (Confederação Geral dos Trabalhadores - CGT).
Context
Economic climate
The early 1960s marked the end of an accelerated growth period of the Brazilian economy, which had been experiencing an average annual growth rate of 6.3%. The import substitution industrialization development model, predominant since the end of World War II, had lost its dynamism, and between 1963 and 1967 Brazil's economic growth decreased by half. After the 1964 coup, Castelo Branco appointed notable liberals to direct economic policy, among them Octavio Gouvêa de Bulhões and Roberto Campos. The new economic team gave priority to fighting inflation and reducing the public deficit through the Government Economic Action Plan (Plano de Ação Econômica do Governo - PAEG), which declared the acceleration of the country's pace of economic development and containment of inflationary pressures to achieve price equilibrium as its main objective for the 1965–1966 biennium.
To accomplish this objective, a number of measures were imposed such as the release of suppressed prices from public tariffs, the reformulation of credit policies, a fiscal reform that replaced cascading taxes by value-added taxes, a monetary correction, the creation of the National Treasury Readjustable Bonds (Obrigações Reajustáveis do Tesouro Nacional - ORTN), and the creation of incentive mechanisms for exports, such as tax exemptions on profits from such exports. Labor reforms were also introduced, so that wage adjustments would not generate more inflationary pressure.
The formula adopted in the wage adjustment policy would be based on the recomposition of inflation losses and on the incorporation of the economy's productivity increase to salaries. Furthermore, the hiring and dismissal of labor were made more flexible, replacing severance payments by the employer with the Length-of-Service Guarantee Fund (Fundo de Garantia do Tempo de Serviço - FGTS). This wage restraint was an important element in the subsequent conjuncture of economic growth, which had as one of its characteristics the increase of income concentration, benefiting mainly the urban middle and upper classes. However, the living standards of industrial workers had deteriorated; if one compares wage adjustments with the increase in the cost of living between 1965 and 1967, there was a decrease of at least 25% in real wages, in addition to the intensification of working hours.
The fiscal, credit and labor reforms were considered necessary to overcome the inflationary problem and create adequate conditions for the private sector to promote the resumption of economic development under Branco's leadership. These policies, when paired with the external context of world economic growth and foreign capital investment, would see Brazil into a new period of economic growth based on the expanding domestic demand for durable consumer goods. Thanks to the concentration of income and financial mechanisms which facilitated the expansion of consumer credit as well as new demand thanks to the liberalization of international trade and to export subsidization, and a significant influx of foreign resources that complemented domestic savings, inflationary pressure was eliminated and the nation's import capacity became highly elastic. Between 1968 and 1973, Brazil grew about 10% per year.
The turbulent scenario generated by the oil crisis in 1973, however, brought with it a long period in which the world economy remained much more hostile to the growth of developing countries such as Brazil. In 1974, the trade balance deficit reached about 4.5 billion dollars, with a high number of imports and low exports due to the conditions of the international market. This also led to an increase in foreign debt. The military regime manipulated the inflation rates in 1973, masking the true cost of living and harming salaried workers by doing so, this was one of the main motivators of the strike movement started in 1978.
Political opening
With the economic crisis beginning in 1973, the military regime was already beginning to show signs of wear. Ernesto Geisel succeeded Emílio Médici in a period of adjustment and redefinition of priorities, severe foreign debt, performance fluctuations, inflationary difficulties and recession, and the Brazilian Democratic Movement (Movimento Democrático Brasileiro - MDB), the only political opposition party, grew and won a significant electoral victory in 1974, gathering around itself several sectors of organized civil society in favor of the regime's opening. There was growing opposition to the regime not only from workers, the student movement and progressive segments of the Church, but also from the middle class, and around 1977, important segments of the business community declared themselves in favor of the re-democratization of political institutions as a necessary requirement for further economic development. The arrival of Jimmy Carter in the White House in 1977 also made the political-economic sustainability of the military government difficult, since Carter was the first president since the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 who did not give full U.S. support to authoritarian anti-communist regimes in Latin America.
One of the government's strategies to face the moment of crisis was to establish a way to gradually soften the regime, in a movement of "slow, gradual and secure" distension. A process of transition to democracy was slowly initiated, which should include basic guarantees for the regime, avoiding the return of pre-1964 political leaders, institutions and parties. This would take about ten years, implying the choice of Geisel's successor still by the military regime and culminating in the drafting of a new constitution. Some important measures were taken under the Geisel government, such as the suppression of Institutional Act Number Five (Ato Institucional No 5 - AI-5) and the end of press censorship. However, the scope and pace of the opening fell far short of what the opposition wanted. Faced with demands for reforms and shaken by growing tensions within the government supporting alliance, in 1979, with the inauguration of João Figueiredo, the regime would undertake a process of amnesty and restoration of democratic institutions.
Within the opposition groups, the workers' movement that erupted in 1978 in the ABC Paulista area took a more militant position, together with the student movement, assuming as its banner the demand for an immediate return to democracy. The open confrontation between workers and the State forced other opposition groups, particularly the Church and MDB politicians, to take a position regarding the legitimacy of the collective actions confronting the State. Although the government often warned that workers' agitation could jeopardize the democratic opening, unions continued to attack the regime through struggles for better economic conditions. Around 1980, during the long strike of the ABC metalworkers, both the Church and the MDB were compelled to openly support the strikes that were considered illegal.
Background After the military coup, many unions suffered intervention and lost their potential to claim, once the State became responsible for defining the rates of wage increases, and Law No. 4.330, which regulated the right to strike, imposed severe restrictions that practically impeded the deflagration of strike movements. With the increase of repression after the decree of AI-5 in 1968, the labor movement entered into a period of reflux. However, the cassations of the leadership linked to the Brazilian Communist Party (Partido Comunista Brasileiro - PCB) and the Brazilian Labor Party (Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro - PTB) made possible the rise of new union leadership, such as Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, without ties to the hitherto traditional leftist parties and groups.
Already in the early 1970s, there were strike action attempts in the ABC region, one of them triggered at Mercedes-Benz and another at Ford's tool shop, both discouraged by the ABC Metalworkers Union, at the time led by Paulo Vidal. At Villares Metals S.A., in 1973, a strike of unique characteristics occurred, where the workers carried out a pendular movement of paralysis and resumption of work, leaving the employer unable to prevent its outbreak.
A more timid union action slowly started a process of approximation of the union leaderships with the grassroots. In the 1970s wage campaign, for example, the São Bernardo and Diadema Metalworkers Unions separated themselves from the São Paulo Metalworkers Federation and tried to develop their campaign in an autonomous way, because it was thought that some of the demands from the automobile industry were diluted when added to the ones from the other unions of the interior of the state.The wage indices were negotiated between the São Paulo Metalworkers Federation and the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo (FIESP), in an agreement valid for the entire category. In the 1973 wage campaign, it was claimed a 38% readjustment, an index which was based on studies by the Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies Intersyndicate Department (Departamento Intersindical de Estatística e Estudos Socioeconômicos - DIEESE), again seeking a dissent separately from the Federation, without success. In the following year, the claim that took into account the productivity of the automobile industry was present with more emphasis. Also held in 1974 was the I São Bernardo Metalworkers Congress, where the theme of productivity and the high profit rates of the automobile industry were related to the increase of the work rhythm, the extension of the daily work day and the high turnover of the work force, as well as guiding the fight for union freedom.