Survey Findings: New Unionism Fostering the Attitude of Active Citizenship

Abstract

Chapter 5 detailed the research design of this survey and both the theoretical and methodological assumptions of the statistical test constructed to elicit the attitudes of the population survey. This chapter aims to discuss the survey findings in the light of previous research on the Brazilian labour movement and more general theoretical insights for the study of labour and political culture. We start by comparing the results achieved by workers belonging to the two types of unions involved in the survey — the new unionism and the ‘traditional’ ones. Such a comparison was carried out in accordance with certain selected indicators picked up from the attitude scale on the grounds of both their significance as components of a culture of active citizenship and their recurrent utilisation in previous studies of workers’ attitudes and political culture. Still in view of those selected indicators, we then narrow the focus to look at the workers representing two sub-samples — metalworkers from ‘Microlite’ and textile industry workers from ‘Lipasa’.