Da concessão à flexibilização de direitos: perspectiva histórica da legislação trabalhista no Brasil

Abstract

The 2017 labor reform carried out during presidente Michel Temer‟s administrat, amended almost 100 articles of the CLT, the Brazilian Labor Code, and also amended the Law 6.019/ 1974, on outsourced labor. With the argument that, by reducing labor rights, jobs and economic growth, would be generated, the new legislation removes the state from interfering with labor relations and allows the overlapping of what was negotiated in relation to the law, among many other changes with flexibilities and loss of rights. Given this scenario, the general objective of this dissertation is to examine the roadmap until 2017, using the historical research method. As specific objectives, this dissertation will seek to explore the historical context in which labor rights were granted to workers in Brazil, during the First Republic and the Getúlio Vargas Government; it will explore the period after the creation of the Brazilian Labor Code, during the Military Dictatorship period, when the institute of the flexibilization of rights begins to be implemented, until the enactment of the Federal Constitution in 1988; the dissertation will demonstrate the attempts to relax the laws during presidents Collor and Fernando Henrique Cardoso Governments and analyze the effective implementation of the 2017 labor reform. Within a historical overview, it can be seen that labor legislation in Brazil begins in the First Republic period, when workers gathered in factories in fighting for better working conditions. On the other hand, the industrialists starting to organize themselves into associations aiming at neutralizing such movements, but the concern about these social rights began in this period. Getúlio Vargas took over the Presidency of the Republic with a scenario of crisis between employees and employers and movements already well organized. Thus, in order to boost the economy and develop the capitalist model, his first finding was the need of regulating the labor realm. This period was the historic milestone in Brazilian labor laws, culminating with the enactment of its Labor Code, the so-called CLT, the Consolidation of the Labor Laws. Therefore, the First Republic and the Getúlio Vargas Government can be considered as the period that the labor rights were garanted to workers in Brazil. After that, the main struggle for the workers was to maintain them, and the country adhered already during the Military Dictatorship to a strong worldwide trend towards the flexibility, which is the moment of more changes in the CLT throughout the historical period surveyed. After this period of repression, the workers struggled to guarantee labor rights in the 1988 Federal Constitution, achieving many substancial advances in this direction. However, some authors argue that the constitutional text brougth some gaps to this trend of flexibilization of rights, which will took off during presidents Collor and Fernando Henrique Cardoso Governments, ending up with the 2017 labor reform, during president Michel Temer‟s government.