The author thanks the reviewer for International Labor and Working-Class History for comments on an earlier draft of this article, which is dedicated to the memory of his great-grandmother Mary Elizabeth Wynne (1888–1982), Labour party candidate for the Rhondda Urban District Council, South Wales, United Kingdom, 1939 and 1949.

1. Quoted in Fink, Leon, In Search of the Working Class: Essays in American Labor History and Political Culture (Urbana, 1994): x.Google Scholar

2. Admittedly, the trend was negative in Australia, Britain, France, the U.S., and Japan over the same period, while in Germany it was constant. The Economist 336 (July 1–7, 1995):54.

3. For example, the number of firm-level unions in South Korea more than tripled between 1965 and 1992, from 2,255 to 7,676; World Bank, Workers in an Integrating World: World Development Report 1995 (New York, 1995), 84.Google Scholar

4. U.S. Department of Labor, Foreign Labor Trends: Brazil, 1991–1993 (Washington, D.C., 1993), 1–2.Google Scholar For other, older estimates of unionized workers in Brazil, see Rodrigues, Leôncio Martins, O Declinio do Sindicalismo Corporativo (Rio de Janeiro, 1991), 19.Google Scholar Estimates of rates of unionization vary in Brazil depending on whether one counts the number of workers formally included in trade unions and subject to the mandatory union tax, or only those who pay additional, voluntary union dues. Needless to say, the latter number is smaller than the former.

5. Even in 1980, union density rates in Austria, Belgium, Great Britain, Denmark, Italy, Norway, and Sweden exceeded fifty percent; Mann, Michael, “Sources of Variation in Working Class Movements in Twentieth Century Europe,” New Left Review 212 (07/August 1995):20.Google Scholar

6. Hanagan, Michael, “New Perspectives on Class Formation: Culture, Reproduction and Agency,” Social Science History 18 (Spring 1994):87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Wright, Erik Olin, “Class and Politics,” in The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World, ed. Krieger, Joel (Oxford, 1993): 149.Google Scholar

8. Wright gives an example. He concedes that in trying to explain the specific temporal sequence of the introduction of social security laws first in Britain, then in Canada, and later in the United States, economic or class factors are of little relevance, and political factors are primary. But if one wants to know why no industrialized societies had social security in the 1850s, but all had it in the 1950s, class structure and transformations of the capitalist economy would loom large in the answer. Wright, “Class and Politics,” 149.

9. Hall, Michael and Spalding, Hobart, “The Urban Working Class and Early Latin American Labor Movements, 1880–1930,” in The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 4, ed. Bethell, Leslie (Cambridge, 1986).Google Scholar

10. Bergquist, Charles, Labor in Latin America: Comparative Essays on Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, and Colombia (Stanford, 1986).Google Scholar

11. Lamounier, Bolivar, “Brazil: Inequality Against Democracy,” in Democracy in Developing Countries, vol. 4, Latin America, eds. Diamond, Larry, Linz, Juan, and Lipset, Seymour Martin (Boulder, 1989): 134.Google Scholar

12. Carrière, Jean, Haworth, Nigel, and Roddick, Jacqueline, eds., The State, Industrial Relations and the Labor Movement in Latin America (New York, 1989), 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. Sandoval, Salvador A. M., Social Change and Labor Unrest in Brazil Since 1945 (Boulder, 1993):24.Google Scholar

14. Carrière, Haworth, and Roddick, The State, 3. I use these figures for illustrative purposes, without meaning to imply that only industrial workers constitute the working class.

15. The percentage of the labor force in manufacturing peaked in 1950 in Chile and in 1960 in Argentina. From Carriére, Haworth, and Roddick, The State, 2–3.

16. About forty percent of those killed during Argentina's dirty war, for example, were trade unionists; Buchanan, Paul, “State Terror as a Complement of Economic Policy: The Argentine Proceso, 1976–1981,” in Dependence, Development and State Repression, ed. Lopez, George and Stohl, Michael (New York, 1989), 54–55.Google Scholar The unionists became a target of repression partly because of the association between the guerrilla left and the dissident trade union movement which, in the eyes of one historian “did great damage to the workers' cause” Brennan, James P., The Labor Wars in Còrdoba, 1955–1976 (Cambridge, 1994):360.Google Scholar

17. Gerschenkron, Alexander, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, 1962), 151, 157, 169.Google Scholar

18. Sandoval, , Social Change, 153–95.Google Scholar

19. Noronha, Eduardo, “A Explosāo das Greves na Decada de 80,” in O Sindicalismo Brasileiro nos Anos 80, ed. Boito, Armando (Sāo Paulo, 1991):125.Google Scholar

20. Slater, David, “Power and Social Movements in the Other Occident: Latin America in an International Context,” Latin American Perspectives 21 (Spring 1994): 13–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. Ira Katznelson argues that class formation should be seen as involving four distinct aspects—the creation of economic categories, experience, disposition, and collective action. Katznelson, , “Working-Class Formation: Constructing Cases and Comparisons,” in Working-Class Formation, ed. Katznelson, Ira and Zolberg, Aristide (Princeton, 1986), 14.Google Scholar I have collapsed his categories of “experience” and “disposition” into “class as cultural creation.” Michael Mann, for his part, seems uninterested in the cultural aspects of class, treating class only as a set of economic positions and as a collective political actor; Mann, “Sources of Variation,” 15. Culture is important, because class politics are frequently as much about recognition as they are about redistribution; see Fraser, Nancy, “From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a ‘Post-Socialist’ Age,” New Left Review 212 (07/August 1995): 70.Google Scholar

22. Keck, Margaret, “The New Unionism in the Brazilian Transition,” in Democratizing Brazil, ed. Stepan, Alfred (Oxford, 1989):260.Google Scholar

23. See Andrews, George Reid, “Latin American Workers,” Journal of Social History 21 (Winter 1987):323;Google Scholar Brennan, The Labor Wars; James, Daniel, Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine Working Class, 1946–76 (Cambridge, 1988);Google Scholar and Winn, Peter, Weavers of Revolution (Oxford, 1986).Google Scholar

24. Marks, Gary, Unions in Politics (Princeton, 1988);Google ScholarSeidman, Gay, Manufacturing Militance: Workers' Movements in Brazil and South Africa, 1970–1985 (Berkeley, 1994).Google Scholar

25. Sandoval, Social Change.

26. Rodrigues, “O Declinio,” 18–19. Rodrigues points out that seventy percent of Brazilian unions have fewer than five thousand members, and thirty-seven percent have fewer than five hundred. His data also shows the recent fast growth in the number of unions outside the relatively industrialized and urbanized south and southeast of the country. In terms of national politics, the impact of this rapid unionization is diluted by the fact that only twenty percent of all unions are affiliated with a labor central.

27. Ventura, Jorge, New Unionism and Union Politics in Pernambuco, Brazil in the 1980s (Ph.D. dissertation, London School of Economics, 1992).Google Scholar

28. See, for example, Boito, Armando Jr, “The State and Trade Unionism in Brazil,” Latin American Perspectives 21 (Winter 1994):7–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29. Collier, David and Collier, Ruth, Shaping the Political Arena (Princeton, 1992).Google Scholar

30. This point is made in passing in Keck, “The New Unionism,” 283–84. However, while it is marginal in her analysis, I see it as a major tension within new unionism, especially in light of further deterioration of public health services due to cuts in government budgets during the last ten years in Brazil.

31. Collins, Joseph and Lear, John, Chile's Free-Market Miracle: A Second Look (San Francisco, 1995), 69.Google Scholar

32. Examples of this kind of argument are Boito, Armando Jr, O Sindicalismo Brasileiro nos Anos 80 (Sāo Paulo, 1991);Google Scholar and de Castro Gomes, Angela and D'Araüjo, Maria Celina, “A Extinçāo do Imposto Sindical: Demandas e contradiçōes,” Dados 36 (1993):317–52.Google Scholar

33. Examples of this argument are Martin, Scott, Forward or Backward? Corporatism and Industrial Restructuring in Brazilian Autos (New York: Paper presented at “The Politics of Inequality,” a conference sponsored by Columbia University, 03 3–6, 1994);Google Scholar and Unger, Roberto Mangabeira, A Alternative Transformadora: Como Democratizar o Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1990), 332.Google Scholar For a debate about the political implications of different labor law regimes, see Lothian, Tamara, “The Political Consequences of Labor Law Regimes: The Contractualist And Corporatist Models Compared,” Cardozo Law Review 7 (Summer 1986): 1001–73;Google ScholarGacek, Stanley A., “Revisiting the Corporatist and Contractualist Models of Labor Law Regimes: A Review of the Brazilian and American Systems,” Cardozo Law Review 16 (08 1994): 21–110Google Scholar, and Lothian, Tamara, “Reinventing Labor Law: A Rejoinder,” Cardozo Law Review 16 (03 1995): 1749–63.Google Scholar

34. This discussion draws from “Fiesp e Sindicatos Filiados a CUT Apoiam fim da Unicidade Sindical,” Foiha de Sāo Paulo, 10 11, 1994, 1–5Google Scholar, as well as an article against the end of unicidade by Neto, Antonio, “Unicidade versus Pluralidade Sindical” in Folha de Sāo Paulo, 10 21, 1994, 2–2.Google Scholar Neto is the president of the CGT.

35. As for the other labor centrals, the declining CGT is identified with more conservative, U.S.-style business unionism, and the relatively new Força Sindical identities itself as a similar kind of “unionism of results.” Data from 1991 indicates that at that time, sixty-five percent of those unions affiliated with a central were affiliated with the CUT, while twenty-nine percent were tied to the CGT; Rodrigues, “O Declinio,” 19. Since then, the latter figure has undoubtedly declined, with the Força Sindical growing but still remaining smaller than the CUT.

36. Tilly, Charles, “Globalization Threatens Labor's Rights,” International Labor and Working Class History 47 (Spring, 1995):1–23.Google Scholar I use here globalization in a narrower, more economic sense than does Tilly. For objections to Tilly's argument, see the comments by Immanuel Wallerstein, Aristide Zolberg, Eric Hobsbawm, and Lourdes Benería in the same issue, 24–55. For the argument that globalization merely provides opportunities and constraints, and does not necessarily harm labor, see World Bank, Workers; for a discussion of globalization as it affects labor in Latin America, see Pereira, Anthony and Welch, Cliff, “Labor and the Free Market in the Americas: Introduction,” Latin American Perspectives 84 (Winter, 1995):3–9.Google Scholar

37. The decline in plant size and growth of the service sector affect union organizing because small plants and service workers are generally harder to organize than manufacturing workers in large plants. Some of these reasons are presented in The Economist 336 (July 1–7, 1995):54.

38. Antunes, Ricardo, “A Centralidade do Trabalho Hoje” (Paper delivered at the Latin American Studies Association meeting, Washington, D.C., 1995):1.Google Scholar

39. Hanagan, , “New Perspectives,” 80–81.Google Scholar

40. World Bank, Workers, 221. The existence of a large informal sector may mitigate these inequalities to some extent, but even after taking that in to account, Brazilian income inequality appears to be of epic proportions.

41. Antunes, Ricardo, “Os Sindicatos da CUT Esthāo em Xeque,” Brasil Agora (June 10–23):5;Google ScholarVilas, Carlos, Back to the ‘Dangerous Classes’? Capitalist Restructuring, State Reform and the Working Class in Latin America (New York, Columbia University/Institute of Latin American and Iberian Studies Paper on Latin America #34, 1993):37.Google Scholar

42. Whether they acknowledge it or not, most students of the working class use some conception of identity. Michael Mann describes working-class identity as “the definition of self as working class, as playing a distinctive role in common with other workers in the economy.” Mann, , The Sources of Social Power, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1993):27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43. This point is made persuasively by Brennan, , The Labor Wars, 352.Google Scholar

44. An example of this phenomenon is the sugar zone of the northeastern state of Pernambuco, where in the 1994 elections the majority of workers strongly supported the socialist caudillo candidate Miguel Arraes for governor, but did not support Arraes' choice of presidential candidate, Lula, of the Workers' party.

45. Mann, , The Sources of Social Power, 2: 27–28.Google Scholar

46. Mann, , “Sources of Variation,” 51–53.Google Scholar

47. The government's supporters are apt to agree with such a characterization. For example, José Arthur Giannotti, a prominent academic supporter of Cardoso, entitled his article lamenting a setback in Cardoso's campaign as “A Step Backward in the Search for Rationality” (Folha de Sāo Paulo, 09 11, 1994, 1–3).Google Scholar Cardoso himself entitled an article about his presidential candidacy “The Maturity of a Great Country” (Foiha de Sāo Paulo, 10 2, 1994, 1–3).Google Scholar

48. There are some questions as to how long the government will be able to maintain the balancing act represented by the Real Plan. The indications are that in 1995, the costs of the Piano Real will include a recession and, possibly, a negative trade balance.

49. Less plausible is the government's claim that private monopolies will serve the public interest better than public ones, or that trade liberalization will transform state-dependent and parasitic capitalists into dynamic, entrepreneurial ones.

50. Quoted in Bryce, James, South America: Observations and Impressions (New York, 1916), 412.Google Scholar

51. One of the few links it does have is through Francisco Urbano de Araújo, a member of the PSDB and president of the agricultural workers' confederation CONTAG.

52. One observer writes:

In Europe social democracy was the fusion of reformist policy with the political organization of the working class. In Latin America these two elements have often developed separately, with reformist policies being advocated by technocratic elites and with the working-class movement often being committed to political vehicles which, however reformist they may have been in practice, were characterized by strident ‘rejectionist’ ideologies of one kind or another. From Roxborough, Ian, “Neo-Liberalism in Latin America: Limits and Alternatives,” Third World Quarterly 13 (Autumn 1992): 436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53. Roxborough, , “Neo-liberalism in Latin America,” 432–33.Google Scholar See also Castanñeda, Carlos, Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left After the Cold War (New York, 1993).Google Scholar

54. It should be said that the PT has never had a trade union bloc vote within its party organization in the style of the British Labour party, but has been constituted instead by local organizations (núcleos and directórios) open to all party members. Trade unionists have been important members of the various levels of party leadership, although they are outnumbered by middle-class professionals. An interesting exploration of the PT's relationship to trade unions and other social movements, and the electoral dilemmas that this presents, can be found in Diane Davis, “New Social Movements, Old Party Structures: Discursive and Organizational Transformations in Mexican and Brazilian Party Politics,” in Social Change and NeoLiberalism in Latin America, ed. Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz and William Smith, forthcoming.

55. For a discussion of the prospects for the Latin American Left in local and state politics, see Fox, Jonathan, “The Crucible of Local Politics,” NACLA Report on the Americas 29 (07/August 1995):15–19;Google Scholar for a telling account of PT administration of two small towns in the northeastern state of Cearà, see Nylen, Bill, “The Workers' Party in Rural Brazil,” same issue, 27–32.Google Scholar

56. President Cardoso's inaugural speech is reprinted in “‘Vou Governar para Todos,’ Promete FHC,” in O Estado de Sāo Paulo, 01 2, 1995, A8.Google Scholar The union's legal action is recounted in “Sindicato Quer Suspender Aumento” in O Estado de Sāo Paulo, 01 19, 1995, A4.Google Scholar