Comerciários, sindicato e desigualdades sociais: contribuição para uma sociologia do sentimento de justiça

Abstract

This work aims to understand the impact of union participation on the ways which commerce workers perceive social inequalities and also on the justice criteria they use to judge their own payment. It starts discussing the necessary conditions to class political action in classic sociologic theory, concluding with a critique of the unidimensionality of the classical Marxist tradition. Opened the path to acknowledgement of the importance of ideal elements on mobilization and even conformation of social classes, it takes the dimension of social inequalities judgement as key, focusing on the justice criteria used by individuals to judge their perceived reality. Our research shows that the justice criteria composition of syndical leaders tends to weigh more what is comprehended as necessities of individuals than plain workers, and shows also that plain workers have more tolerance on income inequalities. The perception of the violation of these criteria is stronger on the syndical leaders, and there seems to be a stronger injustice feeling on them. This empirical result, however, does not hide the strong ideological resemblance between the whole of the interviewees syndical leaders or not syndicalized workers , which world-view is strongly based on the image of the capable individual, basis of the idea of meritocracy, overshadowing the dynamics of interests. This research aims to contribute to the comprehension of a central dimension of class political action.