From 1975 – 1981, Lula was President of the ABC Metalworkers Union in São Bernardo do Campo, the polluted, industrial satellite tv for pc metropolis of São Paulo the place he nonetheless lives to today. On Saturday, January 29, he returned to his former union to congratulate its new President, Moisés Selerges. The next is an excerpt from his speech wherein he talks concerning the results of the post-coup, 2017 labor reforms which rolled again labor rights by 70 years in Brazil, and the alienation attributable to the Gig economic system that was facilitated by these reforms.
What have been us metalworkers when this labor class started? Moisés’ father remembers. Usually metalworkers have been individuals who had moved in from the nation – individuals who might have taken a commerce course. They have been individuals who have been getting into the world of the manufacturing unit for the primary time. They have been individuals who typically had moved right here from the countryside to work within the auto business, or they have been folks like me who had come from Northeastern Brazil to work. We didn’t have a lot training. We might have have completed grammar faculty, perhaps highschool and on the most, commerce faculty. However these children right this moment have studied much more than we did. These children have school levels, Moisés . Your children have school levels and your grand-kids will get them. Wagner and Sergio Nobre (Ex-Metalworkers Union presidents who have been on the occasion) – their children have school levels. These children right this moment have studied 3, 4 or 5 instances greater than we did.
However regardless that these children studied greater than us, what’s their future? You economists, what future awaits these children? What can the labor market supply for these youth who studied, who believed, who dreamed, that now notice that they’ll’t have the steadiness their mother and father had as a result of they invented a bunch of lies about us. They even mentioned that our rights just like the thirteenth paycheck, trip and revenue sharing have been all of the “Brazil value”. They mentioned in the event that they eliminated all of these rights that the working class achieved, we’d turn out to be a less expensive labor power they usually’d pay much less taxes and the companies would develop they usually’d take what they’d been paying in taxes and it could go in the direction of our salaries. This was a lie. They didn’t pay. They didn’t develop.
At the moment the newspapers are displaying that we’ve had the most important fall in salaries because the IBGE began measuring them on this nation, as a result of work has turn out to be precarious. The children right this moment are getting jobs that pay half of what their mother and father earned. These children have school diplomas that the businesses typically don’t even have a look at. There are folks with school diplomas working at fuel stations. There are folks with school diplomas that the businessmen haven’t even requested to have a look at as a result of they’re providing a job that pays R$1500 or R$1600/month. They’ve even invented this concept that working with a signed labor card is simply too costly. That the employee shouldn’t need this and that he ought to be, you recognize what? A person micro-entrepreneur. Purchase a bicycle and begin delivering for Ifoods since you are a person micro-entrepreneur. A small businessman. Who doesn’t wish to be a businessman?
After I was working within the manufacturing unit in 1972, you recognize what my dream was, Moisés ? We didn’t have the phrase “micro-entrepreneur” again then. It’s a brand new factor. Throughout these days our dream was to depart the manufacturing unit and both open a bar or purchase a taxi. This was our grand aspiration. Both open a bar – and a few of us actually couldn’t do it as a result of we’d drink it as a substitute of promoting it and we’d wish to by a taxi. As of late, no. As of late they inform children in the event that they purchase a automotive and begin working for Uber they’ll be micro-entrepreneurs. They usually simply notice they aren’t when the automotive breaks down, once they get sick, when their partner will get sick they usually notice that they don’t have any rights. After they notice that they’re working way more to pay the app than they convey residence to maintain the household. When the motorbike crashes they usually will get damage they notice that they’re price nothing. They notice that they’re an instrument of an app they usually don’t know their very own bosses.
Again in our day we knew our bosses. We’d go to the manufacturing unit door and insult the Germans, we’d insult the Germans on the door of the Mercedes manufacturing unit. We’d insult the colonel at Volkswagen, we’d insult the foremost at Ford. Now they don’t have them. The man who grabs a motorbike to ship pizza doesn’t have anybody to insult as a result of the face of the app is invisible for him. He doesn’t have any rights, he doesn’t have a labor card, he doesn’t have trip, he doesn’t have maternity assist or a thirteenth verify. We’re going again to being pariahs in a capitalist system that’s modernizing in know-how however that doesn’t profit the working class.
This excerpt was transcribed and translated by Brian Mier
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