The test
of the general strike THE BIGGEST obstacle to organizing a general strike against the Bresser plan was the difficulty of building unity in action with the CGT. Three dates were proposed. July 15 was proposed by the CUT. August 12 was rejected by the majority sector in the CGT (but accepted by the PC do B and the CONTAG leadership). Finally, the national executive of the CUT and the CGT agreed on August 20. The following article is from the July issue of Em Tempo T HIS SHUFFLING of dates is not meaningless. It reflects underlying processes at work in the union movement - relations between the CUT and CT that involve both attempts at unity and clashes, but also the changing relationship of forces within the CGT itself. An understanding of these two questions will be of fundamental importance in the CGT's ability to lead a process of unifying struggles in the coming period.
We have always highlighted the considerable expansion of the CUT since it was founded in 1983. This growth can be gauged by various standards: winning the leadership of unions; its involvement in the overwhelming majority of strikes in the country, including national strikes by whole categories of workers; building its own apparatus; the CUT's much more solid unity compared with the CGT; the organization of class-struggle union oppositions.
Reasons for the CUT's advance
We have to explain the fundamental reasons for this advance by the CUT. A confederation that represents a pole of class independence is benefiting from the powerful upsurge of trade-union struggles that has been developing for many years and could not be broken by the bourgeois transition [to parliamentary rule]. A confederation that represents a project of class conciliation is permanently weakened by the few possibilities that exist for concluding social pact when the government's policy is clearly anti-labor.
This growth of the CUT is leading to a situation in which it holds a position of dominance, of leadership of the main active centers of the trade-union movement. But recognizing this should not lead us to underestimate the CGT's strength. 23
In the country's major concentration
October 12, 1987• International Viewpoint
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BRAZIL AOS
BRAZIL of workers - Greater São Paulo - the CGT holds the leadership of the most important union, the metalworkers. It also leads other strong unions such as teamsters, and the Osasco and Guarulhos metalworkers. The CGT leads a large part of the Baixada Santista unions and the majority of the rural unions in the state of São Paulo. It also has the leadership of key metalworkers' unions, like those in Porto Alegre and Rio de Janeiro.
Through the leadership of the Confederation of Agricultural (CONTAG), the CGT exercises a largely predominant influence today in the rural unions. For example, it holds the leadership of one of the most important nuclei of agricultural workers in the Mada district of Pernambuco.
Masses of unorganized
The CGT's influence can also be seen through the masses of unorganized workers who have little experience in struggles, such as the civil construction workers, store workers and other less important categories.
The CGT's weight results in a considerable inertia. It is an important factor in limiting the energies of the movement. Thus, you can work much more effectively to build a general strike if you have the neutrality or even the formal support of the CGT, or frontation with it, when all the CGT's apparatuses, influence and are directed against the strike. Moreover, the obstacles placed in the way by the CT are magnified by the government and the media, which play its opposition up to the maximum.
Likewise, it is significant that the only two processes of partial general strikes in which the workers have participated - July 21, 1983 and December 12, 1986 - were the result of a united call by all the forces in the
All this in no way means that the CUT should in practice accept a CGT veto. It means simply that one of its two central tactics has to be finding a way to work for a policy of unity and to put pressure on the CGT.
To lay out such a policy, it is essential to become familiar with the present situation inside the CGT, with the internal differences which, for example, played a big role in the recent discussion on the date for the general strike.
Today, the CGT can be divided into three basic sections whose evolution over the last two years has determined the general drift of the confederation.
The majority section in the CGT is 24 the one that provides the political and material underpinning for "Joaquinzão," International Viewpoint • October 12, 1987 the present president of the confederation. It basically consists of national union leaders, who have had decadeslong careers of living off the union apparatus and have had no links with the ranks of the movement for a long time. As a layer that plays no role in the process of mobilization (we might call it the "traditional bureaucracy"), it is today unable to respond to a whole series of questions raised by the situa-
The reformist section represented by the PCB, the PC do B and the leadership of CONTAG (which does not have a unified policy within the CGT) has gradually been pushed back inside the confederation. Its policy won out initially at the November 1983 congress, when the CONCLAT was formed, which was more of a coordinating body than a real confederation.2 But it was checkmated in the various developments that led to the formation of Despite that, within the CGT, the reformists are the section with the greatest mobilizing capacity.
recent years, a section that we might call the "modern bureauстасу" has been developing a certain independence from the traditional bureaucracy. Strongly influenced American trade-unionism, its main rep resentative is Roggério Magri, chair of the São Paulo electrical workers (his policy is financed by fat subsidies from the American Institute for Free Labor Development, AIFLD). tion is Luiz Antonio de Medeiros, was recently elected to the leadership
São Paulo metalworkers. He gained notoriety for his statements opposing the 40-hour week and job security. This section is getting an upper hand over Joaquinzão in the CGT, and has the possibility of winning Steady pressure for unity in
This observation that within the CGT there is a reformist sector that is going to come into conflict more and more with the majority indicates that there is a major opening for the CUT to apply steady pressure for unity in action and to speed up the moving apart of these sectors. That would strike a thoroughgoing blow to the CGT.
If the above is true, would it not have been better for the national leadership of the CUT to maintain the August 12 date for the strike in order to accelerate the dynamic of differentiation between the PC do B and the CONTAG leadership on the one hand and the rest of the confederation on the other?
An element that weighed heavily in the decision of the CUT national leadership to put off the general strike was the poor preparation for the action in São Paulo and in its ABC suburbs.?
Putting off the date helped to keep up the pressure on the reformist elements and narrowed the opening for the more right-wing sections of the CGT to work against the strike. For example, after a common decision on the agreed, Luis Antonio, who had formerly against the strike while trying to make a deal with the São Paulo state industrialists' federation, found himself forced to give it at least verbal support. Many comrades wonder whether this policy of unity in action is not going to lead to the reformists coming into the CUT and whether this might destroy the character of the CUT as a democratic class-struggle confederation opposing the bourgeoisie. Contradictory pressures on reformist leaders
In fact, the question should be turned around: Could some reformist sectors join the CUT? Such leaderships are always under contradictory pressures. On the one hand, there is the pressure of the union apparatus, the pressure of the bourgeois state in which these apparatuses are integrated to various degrees and with which they collaborate. On the other, an objective pressure is exercised by their base, which is linked to the workers' movement.
The fact that some of these sectors may envisage joining the CUT undoubtedly reflects the growth of the CUT as the dominant confederation. But above. all, it represents a victory of the class-struggle policy that they can see is building the CUT.
The CUT is increasingly tending to take on the profile of a united-front body and to lose its appearance of simply representing one sector of the trade-union movement. So now, in this process, it is necessary to seek ways of grouping together the class-struggle sectors in the union movement. A clear discussion on formulating trade-union work, on organizing united action by the union militants linked to the party, should therefore be one of the fundamental elements for maintaining the CUT's historic gains — democracy and independence. * 1. Joaquin dos Santos Andrade, called Joaquinzão, preceded Luis Antonio at the head of the São Paulo metalworkers' union, which he led for 22 years. 2. In August 1983, the Second Workers' Congress (CONCLAT) decided to found the CUT, while the reformists (PCB, PC do B) and the union bureaucrats called for another CONCLAT in November 1983, which was to give birth to the CGT. 3. The ABC is São Paulo's belt of big working-class suburbs, where nearly half a million metalworkers are concentrated. The initials stand for São Andre, São Bemardo and São Caetano.