Negociar direitos? : legislação trabalhista e reforma neoliberal no governo FHC (1995-2002)

Abstract

Throughout the twentieth century, labor law has been associated with a political and social arrangement that, within the national states, reproduced capitalism and civilized class relations. The research aims to analyze the shift in the interpretation and meaning of labor law, in the context of strong political hegemony of the center-right coalition that governed Brazil from 1995 to 2002. Throughout this period, the Federal Executive branch, the main employer organizations, important sectors of press and unions had been engaged in a battle to change the Brazilian model of work relations, in which labor law is more important than collective contracts, with regard to the definition of labor rights. In order to justify those changes, the Federal Executive branch and its supporters have considered the burden of the Brazilian model for the formal employment high costs, the competitiveness loss of local industries, the unemployment and informal sector growth during the Cardoso administration. The research analyzes the justifications of legislative initiatives sent to National Congress by Federal Executive branch, the speeches of its political leaders and supporters in the media press and among unions with the purpose of interpret the political meaning of this project, sold to public as a technical and modern solution to a legislation that, presumably, was old-fashioned . The research evidences allow us to affirm that the labor reform had clear political purposes: besides transferring to the workers the economic costs of the neoliberal reforms during the nineties, it had also been useful to justify the retreat of state from the economy and to gain the political support of the main employer organizations.