The Social History of Labor Meets the Strategic Analysis of the Economy: Reading Labor Court Rulings in Postwar Brazil

Two developments reshaped the world of industrial labor in post-WWII Brazil: accelerating (state-led) industrialization since the 1930s and the passing of comprehensive labor legislation codified in the 1943 Consolidação das Leis do Trabalho. The former changed the industrial landscape of Brazil. The latter changed the nature of industrial relations, opening up a new avenue for workers to bring grievances against their employers. The scholarship on these key developments in Brazil's 20^th century history has remained largely separate. Economic historians have studied industrialization, while the limited research done on the labor law and the labor courts has been the domain of social historians.

This paper argues that we need to understand the structure of Brazil's postwar industrial economy to assess the significance of labor court cases as sources for the social history of labor. What kinds of industrial workers (in terms of industrial sector and occupation) brought grievances in the labor courts depended heavily on their place in the overall postwar economy, and the impact of any given ruling also varied depending on the industry. An analysis of the decisions of the Regional Labor Court in Rio de Janeiro from 1946 to 1964 shows that workers in strategic industries (railroads, steel, ports, streetcars) brought grievances with great regularity, which speaks to the their economic power, and these rulings often had a tremendous economic impact because they applied to large numbers of industrial workers – or at least set precedents for large numbers of workers.

These labor court rulings are rich sources to write a (Thompsonian) social history of industrial workers in postwar Brazil, but only once we incorporate the economic dimension do we appreciate the full significance of the labor law for the country's path of social and economic development.