The CUT’s Model: Structures, Practices and Proposals

Abstract

The changes in the Brazilian socio-economic structure during the military rule were highly significant in shaping the new grounds on which the emerging unionism was to develop. The modernisation of the productive structure of the country and the concentration of manufacturing industry in some specific regions and sectors (motor-vehicles, petrochemicals, durable consumer goods, etc.) had little impact on inequalities of income distribution even when the economy was growing fast. Between 1960 and 1980, migration from the countryside amounted to around 28 million people, São Paulo alone accounting for 4.5 million people of those (Alves, 1994). The establishment of a modern industrial core in some metropolitan regions of the great cities opened up massive opportunities of employment for that large contingent of migrants, including their sons and daughters. Such a population concentration generated increasing demands from a new generation of workers eager to get their share of the benefits of the economic miracle.