“Átomos de tempo são os elementos do lucro”: os impactos do primeiro ano da reforma trabalhista sobre as negociações coletivas em jornada de trabalho no estado do Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

The new labor legislation, which entered into force in 2017, represents the dismantling of social and labor rights consolidated by the Brazilian people in the last century, and legalized practices that already existed in the job market but were considered illegal. This created several possibilities for employers to adjust the workforce to their own interests, in a variable and customized way, with types of work such as telecommuting, zero-hour contract and forms of expanding and flexibilizing the working time. According to Marx, under the capitalist mode of production, the necessary labor can only be a portion of the working time, which can never be reduced to this minimum, so extending the working time is crucial for the capital and for increasing the surplus value. The first portion of this dissertation will address the context marked by economic crisis, disbelief in the traditional forms of political representation, including trade unions, and it will adress the forms of flexibilization of social rights brought by the labor reform, granting more freedom to the employer and subjecting the workers to more instability, whether due to the direct negotiation between employer and employee, which allows for a decentralized negotiation that is coordinated within the company, in accordance with its interests, or due to the unions’ feebleness. The new law also allows unions to reduce rights to levels below the legal provisions and supresses the mandatory union’s funding. The second portion of this work will analyze the impact of the new law on the negotiation between unions and companies, based on empirical data, analyzing clauses on working time bargained in the first year of the reform, in comparison with thouse negotiated in the year before the new legislation