Drowning in Laws

by French, John D.

• ISBN13: 9780807828571
• ISBN10: 0807828572
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-06-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

Since 1943, the lives of Brazilian working people and their employers have been governed by the Consolidation of Labor Laws (CLT). Seen as the end of an exclusively repressive approach, the CLT was long hailed as one of the world's most advanced bodies of social legislation. In "Drowning in Laws, John D. French examines the juridical origins of the CLT and the role it played in the cultural and political formation of the Brazilian working class. Focusing on the relatively open political era known as the Populist Republic of 1945 to 1964, French illustrates the glaring contrast between the generosity of the CLT's legal promises and the meager justice meted out in workplaces, government ministries, and labor courts. He argues that the law, from the outset, was more an ideal than a set of enforceable regulations there was no intention on the part of leaders and bureaucrats to actually practice what was promised, yet workers seized on the CLT's utopian premises while attacking its systemic flaws. In the end,,French says, the labor laws became "real" in the workplace only to the extent that workers struggled to turn the imaginary ideal into reality.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Abbreviations	xvii
Introduction	1	(9)
one Brazilian Labor Legislation and the Origins Debate: Gifts Bestowed and Fascist Impositions	10	(13)
two The Scholarly Politics of Brazilian Labor Law	23	(17)
three The CLT in Practice: A Generosity Akin to Fraud	40	(14)
four For the English to See? The CLT in Foreign and Domestic Perspective	54	(19)
five The Enigma of Brazilian Labor Law: Vargas and the Government's Bureaucratic Trabalhista Empire, 1950-1954	73	(24)
six Labor Law through the Prism of Subjectivity: Legal Consciousness, Grievances, and Class Mobilization	97	(25)
seven The Politics of Aphorism: The Social Question as a Police Matter (Caso de Policia)	122	(29)
conclusion Drowning in Laws and Starving (for Justice) : Workers and the Quest to Realize the Imaginary	151	(4)
appendix The Man of the Book: "This Is My Bible," by Joan Bak	155	(4)
Notes	159	(44)
Glossary	203	(2)
Bibliography	205	(22)
Index	227