ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the institutional arrangements in Brazil are residues of previous authoritarian regimes and reflect the efforts by dominant classes to incorporate the working class into the economy and political arena under systematic controls by the state as a means of restricting labor unrest. Thus the Brazilian state exercised considerable control over industrial relations and internal union affairs until 1988, when the new constitution restricted government intervention. The state’s control over all labor leaders rested on its authority to depose disruptive elements from elected posts and judge the eligibility of candidates for union offices. The Ministry of Labor exercised control over labor organizations basically through three mechanisms: through the power to extend and withdraw recognition of a union as the workers’ legal representative, through the collection and distribution of union revenues and through the supervision of the use of federally collected union funds.
