Estudos Avançados #81 Examines Labor, Employment and Income
The dossier “Labor, Employment and Income” in the new edition of Estudos Avançados (No. 81), to be published in September, contains 16 articles by 29 authorities on issues such as the transformations of work in Brazil; the expansion of the middle classes; professional training; the persistence of slave-like labor; the paradox of low economic growth and large supply of jobs; the transnationalization of labor; and the labor unions’ view of legislation, minimum wage and lower unemployment.
According to Alfredo Bosi, the journal’s editor, the object of the dossier is Brazil’s current situation as a locus of work, employment and unemployment. He points out that the all the experts contributed to the methodical presentation of basic data extracted from censuses, statistics and tables published by reliable government and labor union organizations. Furthermore, “the en bloc view of the status of the question was more than offset by regional studies.”
Bosi adds that “the data is accompanies by structural and situational interpretations that seek to understand the complex web of interactions between relatively felicitous employment performance in recent years and the vicissitudes of an economic policy with modest growth rates.”
THE MIDDLE CLASSES
Pierre Salama, professor emeritus at Université Paris 8, France, opens the dossier with the article, “Can the Middle Classes Boost GDP Growth in Emerging Economies?” For him, the expansion of the middle classes is not the cause of problems of economic growth.
Salama explains that the middle classes are “a difficult-to-identify object” and their expansion is more the result of growth than its cause. Furthermore, he believes that trade liberalization and the evolution of technology “no longer allow a virtuous correspondence, which could be found in the past, between the demand for consumer durables and the optimal dimensions to produce these goods.”
“It’s the aggregate demand of society’s poor and vulnerable segments and of the middle classes that help to boost the domestic market provided that, at the same time, certain measures are taken to limit the weight of rentist income and to turn rentist economies into productive economies.”
ECONOMIC POLICY
Paul Baltar, professor at the Institute of Economics and a researcher of the Center for Labor Union Studies (cesit) at unicamp, contributed with the article “Economic Policy, Employment and Job Policy in Brazil.” Taking into account the socioeconomic status of the population and the structure of wage labor, the author examines recent trends in job and income generation in Brazil, which he associates with the performance of the economy in terms of GDP growth and inflation rate.
Baltar stresses the importance of the State in regulating the economy and the labor market, and analyzes the job growth outlook in the face of the global crisis, considering the changes in the size and profile of the economically active population – which, in turn, are a consequence of demographic dynamics and of the participation of men and women of different ages in economic activity.
João Sabóia, professor of the Institute of Economics at the Rio de Janeiro Federal University (ufrj), also examines Brazil’s economic performance and labor market. In the article, “Slow Economic Growth and a Vigorous Labor Market: How to Understand this Apparent Contradiction,” he discusses the favorable evolution of the labor market since 2004, which began to simultaneously exhibit higher wages and lower unemployment and informality.
The article concentrates on the 2011/2013 triennium, when the economy slowed down sharply but the labor market continued to show positive results. Sabóia’s central argument is that this was due to low labor productivity, which favored the creation of a large number of underproductive and underpaid jobs.
TRANSFORMATION
In the article, “Brazil: A Second Great Transformation of Labor?”, Marcio Pochman, professor at the Institute of Economics and a researcher at Cesit (unicamp), states that “the appreciation of work can be traced to the fall of unemployment associated with an increase in formal wage labor.”
He points out that, concurrently with an actual increase of the minimum wage, overall wages have also risen more than inflation, a feat that expresses the renewed effectiveness of labor unions in incorporating productivity gains generated by the economy.
However, “to prevent the great transformation of labor from reproducing the mistakes made between the 1930s and 1970s, an innovative approach to social issues is required to create more efficient and more effective social and labor policies.”
Ricardo Antunes, professor of Sociology of Labor at unicamp, contributes with “Drawing the New Morphology of Labor in Brazil.” Countering theories that often purport the decreasing relevance of labor in the contemporary world, Antunes states, “We are challenged to understand its new morphology, whose most visible element is its multifaceted design, resulting from the powerful mutations that have impacted capitalism in recent decades.”
In his opinion, this new morphology comprises “the industrial and rural working class, as well as employees of the service sector, the new contingents of subcontracted, outsourced and temporarily employed men and women that continue to grow in Brazil.”
LEGAL ASPECTS
“Looking for a New Labor Law: Economic Crisis, Class Conflict and Social Protection in Modernity” is the title of the article by Antonio Rodrigues de Freitas Jr., professor of the University of São Paulo’s Law School. According to him, in order to determine the content and meaning of labor’s new legal status, we must take into account the factors that caused the decline of the welfare state, because “[the welfare state] was not only the best-known political project, but also the one that came closest to reconciling democracy and income distribution.”
Cássio da Silva Calvete, professor at Rio Grande do Sul Federal University (ufrgs), and Mariana Hansen Garcia, journalist, are the authors of “ILO Convention 151 and its Impacts on Brazil’s Civil Servants,” where they analyze the difficulties Brazil faces to regulate Convention 151, which deals with labor relations in the public sector and seeks to improve work conditions for these employees. The article also traces the evolution of collective bargaining in the Brazilian public sector.
The main initiatives of the Brazilian government to eradicate slave labor are described in the article “Confronting Work Performed in Conditions Analogous to Slavery,” by Alexandre Rodrigo T. da C. Lyra, from the Ministry of Labor and Employment.
HISTORY
In the article “Labor in Brazil: An Interpretive Overview of its Onset, History and Critiques”, Heinz Dieter Heidemann and Carlos de Almeida Toledo, professors at the School of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (fflch) of the University of São Paulo, and the Geography doctoral student Cássio Arruda Boechat discuss the development and crises of labor in Brazil.
The researcher address the territorialization of capital as a specific process of regional expropriation, with specific labor relations, that lasted until the social conditions of wage labor were duly established. They also analyze the resurgence of slave labor in Brazil as an expression of the collapse of the globalized phenomenon of modernization.
Lucia Garcia, from the Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies (dieese), and Leila Luiza Gonzaga, from the Seade Foundation, contribute with “A Survey of Employment and Unemployment: Thirty Years Monitoring the Labor Market in the São Paulo Metropolitan Region”. They inform that this survey was implemented in October 1984 by the Seade Foundation and dieese, as an attempt to portray a complex and heterogeneous labor market in a manner comparable to international statistics.
According to the authors, “Over these thirty years of employment and unemployment surveys, the major changes in the labor market of São Paulo’s metropolitan region were: lower overall and componential unemployment rate; increased female and lower youth participation; greater job formalization; larger oscillation of the economically active population; and smaller gap between the wages of the richest and the poorest.”
Shifting wage differentials between migrants, returning migrants and non-migrants in Brazil between 2000 and 2010 are the subject of the article “Migration and Incomes in Brazil: Analysis of Related Factors in the Inter-Census Period, 2000-2010,” by Ana Flávia Machado, professor at Minas Gerais Federal University (ufmg), and Luiz Carlos Day Gama, doctoral student at the same university.
Among the key findings of the study are the: being male, young and schooled increases the probability of someone migrating and returning; migrants and returning migrants are better paid than non-migrants; and the situation of workers improved in this period, with raising wages and reduced regional income inequalities, with migration as a contributing factor.
PROFESSIONAL TRAINING
The experience of professional qualification programs in Brazil is the topic of the article by Tarcisio Patricio de Araujo and Roberto Alves de Lima, both from Pernambuco Federal University (ufpe). In their essay, titled “Professional Training in Brazil: Critical Review, Current Status and Perspectives,” the researchers point out that current educational standards restrict the advancement of professional training of the workforce and that the numbers of professional qualification in Brazil don’t match the results obtained by such programs.
They believe that if the current situation remains unchanged, the most likely scenario is that “any increase in the rate of economic growth will remain constrained by the lack of a skilled workforce.”
Sylvio Mário Puga Ferreira, from the School of Social Studies at Amazonas Federal University (ufam), and Lissandro Botelho, from Federal Institute of Amazonas (ifam), study the labor market in Manaus’ Industrial Park in the article “Industrial Employment in the Northern Region: The Case of Manaus’ Industrial Park.”
The authors discuss the social division of labor and comment on the employment situation of the Industrial Park, based on analyses of the local database. From these analyses, they recommend a strategy to promote the qualification of the Industrial Park workers, and to attract and retain businesses offering better jobs with higher average wages.
In “Professional Learning: Work and Social & Economic Development,” Ana Lucia de Alencastro Gonçalves, from the Ministry of Labor and Employment, addresses the effects of Laws No. 8,213/91 and No. 10,097/2000, which provide, respectively, mandatory quotas to ensure that companies maintain on their staff a certain percentage of people with disabilities and the inclusion of at least 5% of young people by means of special work agreements.
THE VIEW OF THE LABOR UNIONS
“Labor Federations and Labor Issues” contains the answers given by Vagner Freitas de Moraes, president of the Central Única dos Trabalhadores [Unified Workers’ Central – CUT], Edson Carneiro Indio, secretary-general of Intersindical – Central da Classe Trabalhadora [Working Class Federation], and Antonio Neto, president of the Central dos Sindicatos Brasileiros [Federation of Brazilian Labor Unions – csb], to three questions posed by the editor of Estudos Avançados:
1. What is the position of your union federation regarding the Consolidation of Labor Laws (clt)? Should it remain as it is or should it be reformed? If reformed, what changes do you deem more important?
2. How should the formula to determine the minimum wage be reconsidered? What does the minimum wage mean for workers today? How do changes in the minimum wage actually affect the national economy?
3. What are the reasons for the current drop in unemployment in Brazil, considering that crises in this area continue to unsettle the economies of developed countries?
TRANSNATIONALIZATION
The article “The Industrial Determinants of Transnational Solidarity: Global Inter-Union Politics in Three Sectors,” authored by Mark Anner, Ian Greer, Marco Hauptmeier, Nathan Lillie and Nik Winchester, researchers from universities in the United Kingdom, United States and Finland, compares forms of labor transnationalism in motor manufacturing, maritime shipping and clothing & textile manufacturing.
According to the authors, in each case, unions engage in very different transnational activities to reassert control over labor markets and competition. “As institutions of transnational cooperation deepen, unions continue to struggle with competitive tensions (worker to worker and union to union) which vary from one industry to another.”
The 81st issue of Estudos Avançados also includes a “Reviews” section, containing six essays on seven books on American geopolitics, the life of father Tito de Alencar (1945-1974), the Brazilian social structure in the 2000s, the scientific work of Mario Schönberg, a sociological analysis of the role of waste pickers in the recycling industry, and the new edition of “Invenção de Orfeu,” by Jorge de Lima.
Estudos Avançados No. 81, 296 pages, R$ 30.00 (annual subscription with three issues for R$ 80.00). Information on purchasing copies or subscriptions can be obtained by sending an email to edilma@usp.br.
Photo: Marcos Santos/USP Imagens