The news of the return to the mandatory union tax, which was abolished in 2017 and is said to be three times what it was then, could end up being a target in favor of the ultra-liberal Bolsonarismo, which preaches politics with less and less state.
The abolition of the mandatory daily labor tax for the union coffers in 2017 was a lump in the throat of the unionist Lula, who is now the country’s president for the third time. Therefore, the controversial issue is now resurfacing with the support of the ex-union leader.
The problem is that the world and Brazil have changed radically in the last six years and any return to the past risks democratic regression. It is perhaps not thanks to Bolsonarismo in Brazil that a potential government by Milei in Argentina, with its ultra-liberal leanings and enemies of the state, could throw the old plans of the classic left, starting with the unions, into crisis.
The surprise at the resurgence of radical changes in the world of work, and with it the crisis of the traditional unions of the past, at a mandatory employee tax for union funds, is causing concern.
And it’s no longer about left and right, terms that are becoming more and more overused, but about the epochal changes that the world is experiencing and that the traditional left, that of the old and strong branch unions, finds difficult to understand and digest.
Today, politicians who belong to the left trade union movement of the past cannot ignore that we are witnessing one of the greatest revolutions in the world of work. The crisis of dozens of ordained jobs of the past is no longer a hypothesis but a reality. These were professions that were at the heart of traditional unions and are now undergoing profound change as new professions emerge, still undefined and without state support.
Instead of reviving the old unions that protected professions that afforded security and privilege, politicians and rulers today need to understand that those who need special attention are the rosary of new professions in training, destined to their fate without unions to protect them are left.
It is true that Lula and his party, the PT, were born and forged in union struggles in the midst of the big factories and that the unions were then their greatest protection. These were unions that grew from the heart of the left and provided security for workers. Today, however, the common denominator of the new jobs is the insecurity from which there are no unions to protect them and which they will be left to their fate.
Therefore, the news of the revival of the old union tax on permanent employees, who are in some ways privileged, is beginning to give cause for concern as it could become a weapon in the hands of the ultra-liberal Bolsonaro, who is proclaiming the death of the state and its policy of protection for those who know how to succeed, leaving the weakest in the ditch, who said ultra-liberalism should be left to their fate.
The final say on the idea of reviving the old mandatory union tax will now go to Congress, which canceled it in 2017 amid much controversy. It all seems that it will not be easy for the new Lula government to return to its union past, since it does not have the majority in Congress, which it is trying to win step by step, at the cost of handing over departments even to open Bolsonaro parties.
The ongoing controversy over the revival of the old union tax reveals the internal struggle of his PT party’s old guard in the new Lula government. It is the old left that sometimes does not seem to have understood that the world is in the making, including in the world of work, and that it owes its return to power to the forces of the center that have supported it and that they are the ones who secured his victory, albeit by a handful of votes, against the rabid and coup-addicted Bolsonaro.
Lula has got off to a good start on his new governing adventure, already garnering a 60% national consensus and bleeding dry the most rabid Bolsonaro. Trying to revive the old compulsory union tax doesn’t seem like the best proof that he has understood that his third government owes this not only to the strength of his party, which today like all leftists is in crisis, but also the support he had from a democratic center. This center was the shield against the avalanche not only of the ultra-liberals, but also against Bolsonaro’s coup, as the ongoing investigations show, the 17 trials against him, his political disqualification for eight years, the possibility of preventing him from fleeing abroad, and a not impossible one. detention in the next few days.
Lula’s frenzied foreign policy, which seeks to put Brazil in the global spotlight, deserves applause after Bolsonaro’s blockade shrouded the true strength of the world’s fifth largest country. What he cannot forget, or can only leave in the hands of his former union colleagues, is that the world, beginning at the workplace, is in turmoil and demands new solutions to the vagaries that rule it.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits