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Taking the Measure of Labor: Rural Rationalization in Twentieth-Century Brazil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2014

Thomas D. Rogers*
Affiliation:
Emory University

Abstract

Rural sugarcane workers in the Brazilian Northeast negotiated with planters in 1963 to establish guidelines for measuring jobs, producing a document they called the Task Table. This article situates the Table in historical context, placing it in a long-term process of agricultural rationalization that generated struggles over flexibility, control, and freedom on the job. The Table emerged at one moment in these battles and since conflicts like these over productivity, efficiency, and control are common to industrial and agricultural work alike, analyzing the Table offers insight into a broad struggle between workers and employers over the conditions and regulation of labor. For a region of hundreds of thousands of sugarcane workers, the Task Table reflected and facilitated the transformation of labor relationships, views of the working environment, and worker consciousness.

Type
Environment and Labor
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2014 

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References

NOTES

I give warm thanks to the participants in the 2011 Toronto Brazilian History Workshop, my colleagues Elena Conis, Julia Bullock, and AnaPatricia Garcia, and the two ILWCH reviewers for thoughtful and constructive feedback.

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25. British historian James Jaffe suggests that unions often emerged to challenge the implementation of piece rate payment systems. Jaffe, Market Power, introduction.

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28. “Usineiros e Trabalhadores Debatem Uniformização de Tarefas no Campo,” Diário de Pernambuco, June 29–30, 1963, 3.

29. It is overwhelmingly likely that the count was actually measured in braças. But as noted above, “count” traditionally was used as a synonym for “measure,” of whatever sort.

30. “Polícia de Catende ausentou-se, mas camponeses ordeiros frustraram as agitações em ‘Roçadinho’,” Diário de Pernambuco, July 12 1963, 3.

31. A collection of David Montgomery's insightful analyses of these issues in early twentieth-century US is Workers' Control in America: Studies in the History of Work, Technology, and Labor Struggles (Cambridge, 1983)Google Scholar. Especially relevant are Chapters 1–3.

32. Holt, Problem of Freedom, 148.

33. Cook, Scott, Peasant Capitalist Industry: Piecework and Enterprise in Southern Mexican Brickyards (Lanham, MD, 1984), 126Google Scholar. The worker did frankly acknowledge that piece rates encouraged competition with other workers.

34. Bezerra, Gregório, Memórias, segunda parte: 1946–1969 (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Civilização Brasileira, 1980), 178Google Scholar. Manuel Correia de Andradae, Área do sistema canavieiro, SUDENE Estudos Regionais No 18 (Recife: SUDENE/PSU/SRE, 1988), 224.

35. The Diário printed the final agreement, which is in a secret police clipping file on the rural union federation: “Proposta Conjunta das Tabelas das Tarefas do Campo,” in Documentos de Segurança Social e Política (hereafter SSP) 28688: Federação dos Trabalhadores Rurais de Pernambuco, APE.

36. “Proposta conjunta…” in SSP 28688: Federação de Trabalhadores Rurais de Pernambuco, APE.

37. Welch, The Seed Was Planted, 215.

38. Welch, The Seed Was Planted, 215. Maybury-Lewis, Biorn, The Politics of the Possible: The Brazilian Rural Workers' Trade Union Movement, 1964–1985 (Philadelphia, PA, 1994), 39Google Scholar.

39. Bezerra, Memórias, 178.

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41. Thompson, “Time,” 85.

42. I cite Thompson without wishing to imply that England's industrial revolution established a model for the trajectory of labor relations elsewhere in the world. I find the observation compelling because it so aptly describes the case in Pernambuco, but I recognize that the location- and context-specific paths to these points differed. Dipesh Chakrabarty rightly critiques Thompson for declaring that capitalism will inevitably bring time-discipline to the developing world. Of course, capitalism operates within history and does not create its own inexorable temporality. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ, 2000), 48Google Scholar.

43. For my description of the elite vision of the plantation landscape, see Rogers, Thomas D., “Laboring Landscapes: The Environmental, Racial, and Class Worldview of the Brazilian Northeast's Sugar Elite, 1880s–1930s,” Luso-Brazilian Review 46 (2009): 2253 Google Scholar.

44. “Proposta Conjunta das Tabelas das Tarefas do Campo,” op cit.

45. Ronivaldo Nascimento, interview with the author, tape recording, Engenho Humaitá, Palmares, January 25, 2003.

46. March 7, 1966, letter from Agápito Francisco Santos to Delegado Regional do Trabalho, in SSP 1606: Sindicato dos Trabalhadores Rurais de São Lourenço da Mata, APE.

47. Joaquim Manuel dos Santos and Severino José da Silva, interviews, op cit.

48. Scott, Seeing Like a State, 11–25.

49. In a dialogue with Scott's ideas, Michael Ervin argues that subject populations actually desire some of the products that come from these Scottian tools of quantification and measurement. In the specific case of the post-Revolutionary Mexican state, he describes the double-edged quality of statistics and maps, which could both help and constrain popular groups. Ervin, Michael A., “Statistics, Maps, and Legibility: Negotiating Nationalism in Post-Revolutionary Mexico,” The Americas 66 (2009): 156Google Scholar.

50. The nineteenth-century British masons Richard Price studied also sought arrangements with employers that would limit their work. Their solutions ranged from “relatively simple statements of hours and wages to complex and detailed exegeses which minutely regulated the conditions under which the work was to be done.” In all cases, the agreements included restrictions on piecework. Price, Masters, Unions and Men, 90.

51. Rottenberg, Simon, “Negotiated Wage Payments in British West Indian Agriculture,” Journal of Farm Economics 33 (1951): 403Google Scholar.

52. See Montgomery, Workers' Control in America.

53. Scott notes the frailty of simplifying instruments in the face of reality's complexity. Even as authoritarian states rely on them, he writes, they undermine those states' projects by failing to account for the messiness of social and environmental dynamism. Scott, Seeing Like a State, 77, 80, 82, 89, 95, 262.

54. “Paro Totalmente Atividade dos Trabalhadores da Cana,” Diário de Pernambuco, November 20 1963, 3. Bezerra, Memórias, 175–179. Page, Joseph A., The Revolution that Never Was: Northeast Brazil, 1955–1964 (New York, 1972), 166–69Google Scholar.

55. The New York Times contributed to the mood with articles bearing headlines like “Northeast Brazil Poverty Breeds Threat of a Revolt” and “Marxists Are Organizing Peasants in Brazil.” Tad Szulc, “Northeast Brazil Poverty Breeds Threat of a Revolt,” New York Times, October 31, 1960; Szulc, “Marxists Are Organizing Peasants in Brazil,” New York Times, November 1, 1960.

56. “Porque os Trabalhadores Rurais não Acreditam em Tabelas,” flyer dated October 28, 1968, in SSP 1352: CONTAG, APE.

57. Correia de Andrade, Área do Sistema Canavieiro, 390–391. Dantas, Bento and Lúcio dos Santos e Silva, Subsídios para o programa de desenvolvimento sustentável da zona da mata (Recife, 1995), 72Google Scholar. de Andrade, Manuel Correia, Modernização e pobreza: a expansão da agronindústria canavieira e seu impacto ecológico e social (São Paulo, 1994), 42, 173Google Scholar.

58. Scott argues that the operative temporality of high modernist regimes is the future, so planning becomes a scientific process endowed with great prestige and importance. Scott, Seeing Like a State, 95–96.

59. “Contrato Coletivo de Trabalho, na Lavoura Canavieira de Pernambuco,” in SSP 28688: Federação dos Trabalhadores Rurais de Pernambuco, APE.

60. FETAPE, Levantamento sócio-econômico, 19. Many scholars agree that after a period of harsh repression, the military government deliberately allowed the union movement to operate. See versions of this argument in Pereira, Anthony, The End of the Peasantry: The Rural Labor Movement in Northeast Brazil, 1961–1988 (Pittsburgh, PA, 1997)Google Scholar; Maybury-Lewis, The Politics of the Possible; and Houtzager, Peter, “State and Unions in the Transformation of the Brazilian Countryside, 1964–1979,” Latin American Research Review 33 (1998): 106108 Google Scholar.

61. Koury, Mauro Guilherme Pinheiro, “Movimentos sociais no campo (estudos),” Texto de Debate 9 (1986): 1946 Google Scholar; “DRT Considera Ilegal Greve do Cabo e Adverte que Decretará Intervenção,” Diário da Noite, September 17, 1968. The Cabo union might have felt safe organizing a strike because of its relationship to Father Melo, a priest involved in the rural labor movement who had cultivated a relationship with the military regime.

62. Quoted in French, John, Drowning in Laws: Labor Law and Brazilian Political Culture (Chapel Hill, NC, 2004), 175Google Scholar.

63. Scott, Seeing Like a State, 87.

64. The Northeast's market share was dropping even as the federal government was pursuing a “Plan for the Expansion of the National Sugar Industry.” Correia de Andrade, Modernização e pobreza, 173. Dantas, Bento, A agroindústria canavieira de Pernambuco: as raízes históricas dos seus problemas, sua situação atual e suas perspectivas (Recife, 1971), 3638 Google Scholar. Dantas and Silva, Subsídios para o Programa de Desenvolvimento, 17.

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66. Union President Agápito Francisco Santos letter to Regional Labor Commissioner, March 7 1966, in SSP 1606: Sindicato de Trabalhadores Rurais de São Lourenço da Mata, APE.

67. “Exmo. Sr. Ministro do Trabalho e da Previdência Social,” November 4, 1966, in SSP 31,496: Federação dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura de Pernambuco (VI), APE.

68. “Porque os Trabalhadores Rurais não Acreditam em Tabelas,” op. cit. Letter from Rural Workers Union of Rio Formoso, September 10, 1968, in SSP 1634: Sindicato dos Trabalhadores Rurais de Rio Formoso, APE.

69. FETAPE, Levantamento sócio-econômico, 44.

70. Letter to Polícia Federal from rural union of São Lourenço da Mata, November 26, 1969, in SSP 1606: Sindicato de Trabalhadores Rurais de São Lourenço da Mata, APE.

71. November 26, 1969, letter from São Lourenço da Mata union to Departamento de Polícia Federal, in SSP 1606, op cit.

72. Sigaud, Lygia, Os Clandestinos e os Direitos: Estudo sobre Trabalhadores da Cana-de-Açucar de Pernambuco (São Paulo, 1979), 90, 97Google Scholar.

73. Junta de Conciliação e Julgamento (hereafter JCJ), Palmares 1965–1966, Arquivo do Tribunal Regional do Trabalho (hereafter A-TRT).

74. See Termo de Reclamação 86/63, JCJ Nazaré da Mata, A-TRT for an example of contractor-planter agreements, as spelled out in court testimony.

75. “Relatório No 01/76, Recife, 9 fevereiro de 1976,” in SSP 31,496: FETAPE VII, APE. FETAPE president Almeida do Nascimento only gave numbers for the country as a whole. At that scale, temporary workers outnumber contracted workers by 6,800,000 to 1,200,000.

76. Kalleberg, Arne L., “Nonstandard Employment Relations: Part-Time, Temporary and Contract Work,” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 341–65Google Scholar.

77. Humphrey, John, Capitalist Control and Workers' Struggle in the Brazilian Auto Industry (Princeton, NJ, 1982), 87Google Scholar.

78. I have called attention to the importance of this case's implications elsewhere: Rogers, Deepest Wounds, 169–170; Rogers, Thomas D. and Dabat, Christine, “‘A Peculiarity of Labor in this Region’: Workers' Voices in the Labor Court Archive at the Federal University of Pernambuco,” Latin American Research Review 47, special issue (2012): 163–78Google Scholar. While it offers a particularly clear example of the Table's application, my colleague Dabat and I have researched similar cases in Nazaré da Mata and other municipalities, and in our article we note a good deal of other scholarship using the cases.

79. March 17, 1977, hearing in Processo 49/77: Severina Rosa da Conceição e outras (4) vs. Engenho Boa Vista (BA), JCJ-Nazaré da Mata, A-TRT.

80. FETAPE, Levantamento sócio-econômico, 19.

81. Joaquim Manuel dos Santos, interview.

82. FETAPE, Levantamento sócio-econômico, 58.

83. “Exmo. Sr. Ministro do Trabalho e da Previdência Social.”

84. July 13 Judgment in TRT Processo 567/77, A-TRT.

85. July 13 Judgment in TRT Processo 567/77, A-TRT.

86. April 26, 1977, hearing, in TRT Processo 567/77.

87. Thomas D. Rogers, “Making Class Consciousness under a Repressive State: Rural Unions in 1970s Brazil.” Paper for “Class Analysis and the Politics of the People: Investigations in a Post-Colonial Mode,” conference at Emory University, November 22–23, 2013.

88. Irací, interview with the author, tape recording, Vicência, March 7 and March 27. Irací was secretary of the rural union of Vicência, an elected position.

89. Gerson Quirino Bastos, interview with the author, handwritten notes, Recife, March 25, 2003.

90. Koury, Movimentos sociais, 21.

91. This is an argument of Biorn Maybury-Lewis captured in his book title, The Politics of the Possible.

92. Joaquim Manuel dos Santos, interview with the author, tape recording, Murupé, March 27, 2003.