Since early March, workers in Brazil's federal education institutions have been on strike, with the government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (PT) claiming that public education is “not funded”. is objecting to.
The strike movement was launched on March 11 by employees of 66 federal universities. Subsequently, on April 3, teachers and staff from 522 federal basic, professional and technical education units participated, and on April 15, teachers from 31 federal universities participated. This is the largest strike against Lula's government since it took office early last year.
This week, students at several federal universities also went on strike to demand improved educational conditions. They are also protesting the 4 billion reais ($782 million) cut in the health and education budget announced by Lula's government on April 11.
In the latest negotiations between Lula's government and teachers' union representatives on April 19, Lula's government maintained last year's proposal to freeze wages this year and only increased food, health and child care benefits. went. These benefits do not apply to retirees.
Lula's government also proposes increasing wage increases from 9% to a maximum of 13% in 2025 and 2026. However, these figures are far from covering real wage losses that have reached 39% for teachers and 53% for school staff since 2016. Federal education.
Teachers' unions, controlled by the PT and the pseudo-left Socialism and Liberal Party (PSOL), have launched separate strikes on different dates, playing a dangerous role not only in isolating the struggle but also in ignoring the past and the future. I have fulfilled my goal. Loss of wages. They are negotiating with the government to spread the increase of 22.7 percent for teachers and 34.3 percent for staff equally between 2024 and 2026, ignoring inflationary losses over this period.
After backing Lula's candidacy in the 2022 elections against fascist former president Jair Bolsonaro and serving as a key support base for Lula's government, the union said: “Only pressure can make the government inert. “We can help people break away from this,” he argued. National Association of Higher Education Teachers. In practice, this means subordinating the teachers' struggle to negotiations with Lula's government and concealing the PT's long-standing attacks on education.
Since the beginning of the last decade, as the commodity boom subsided and Dilma Rousseff's PT government (2011-2016) began to place the weight of the capitalist crisis on Brazil's working class, federal education teachers and Countless employees lost their jobs. Strike and strike. Under Rousseff alone, there were strikes in 2011, 2012, and 2015. The largest of these occurred in 2012, when teachers went on a four-month strike demanding better pay and working conditions.
After President Rousseff's impeachment in August 2016, a large group of students at hundreds of universities and secondary schools protested against corporate high school reform and the government of Michel Temer's government (2016-2018) to limit social spending. A movement occurred. Successor of President Rousseff.
In all attacks by the Temer and Bolsonaro governments (2018-2022), such as the 2017 labor reform and the 2019 pension reform, trade unions isolated the struggles of federal university faculty from other sectors of the Brazilian working class. I've been doing it. , redirect all strikes and protests towards Lula's election in 2022.
As the strikes under Dilma showed, far from marking a break with the PT government's previous policies, Temer and Bolsonaro only intensified the attacks that began under Rousseff. Currently, Lula's government continues to carry out such attacks.
In an attack on the right to strike, Lula's government on April 10 demanded that the end of the strike be made a condition of negotiations with trade unions. Encountered a backlash and was forced to retreat. Still, on April 16, Camilo Santana, education minister in Lula's government and champion of high school reforms and pro-business education programs in 2016, criticized the strike, saying, “For me, the strike is no more.'' “It's time when there isn't.” Dialogue takes place when negotiations and possible improvements have been completed. ”
Earlier, on April 10, Lula's Finance Minister Fernando Haddad bluntly declared that “the federal budget is closed” to the demands of federal education teachers and staff. Last year, on behalf of Lula's government, Haddad proposed a “new fiscal framework” to replace Temer's government's “spending cap” in order to provide “more rational” management of Brazil's budget and a “zero deficit” goal for Brazil's budget. ” was successfully passed. annual budget. Both measures, widely welcomed in international financial markets, now threaten constitutional spending caps on health and education.
Lula, who has worked hard to establish a good business environment in Brazil, praised Economic Daily's April 23 report on X/Twitter. Valor Economico The country has returned to the list of 25 most attractive countries for foreign direct investment drawn up by consultancy Kearney. It took 19th place, its best result since 2017. Significantly, Argentina, whose fascist president Javier Millei is hailed around the world as a model of austerity and repression, also returns to the list at number 24.
Almost one year and five months have passed since Lula took office, and the reactionary nature of his third term has been exposed in many ways.
Last week, Brazilian media reported that Lula's government had postponed the coronavirus vaccination campaign, citing delays in purchasing doses, after ruling out universal vaccination against COVID-19. Brazil's indigenous groups, which suffered brutal attacks under Bolsonaro, this week excluded Lula from their annual event, citing delays in demarcating indigenous lands.
Brazil's pseudo-left has played a role in covering up Lula's government's attacks on workers and instilling the illusion that it and the trade unions dominated by the PT and PSOL can be pushed to the left. This includes not only the Pablo and Moreno factions of the PSOL, but also those who claim to want to carry out an “independence struggle” and ultimately provide a cover for the “left” by offering means of putting pressure on the Lula government. This also includes organizations that will be involved.
This is the case of the Morenoite Workers' Revolutionary Movement (MRT), the Brazilian sister organization of Argentina's Workers' Socialist Party (PTS).in Eskelda DiarioIts youth organization, Faisca Revolucionaria, said on April 24 that trade unions and youth organizations were “wrong to focus their demands on the restructuring of the budget outside of the fight against this neoliberal policy.” wrote. [the ‘new fiscal framework’] of Lula's government. ”
However, the Lula government's attacks on education and the Brazilian working class are not simply the result of neoliberal policies, but the pro-capitalist character of the PT, PSOL, and the trade unions and youth organizations they control. be. This in turn was ignored by the MRT, which regarded the PT as a “worker-bourgeois” party and stated that “trade union federations, as well as student organizations, can play an important role in coordinating national struggles. ” he claims. united front. ”
Indeed, as the PT has moved further and further to the right since its founding in 1980, its “workers' base” has collapsed. In an era characterized by capitalist globalization, Lula was elected for the first time after 2003, making the PT the preferred ruler. He served for 13 years in the party of the Brazilian and international bourgeoisie. Currently, one of the main bases of the PT is the trade union bureaucracy and the middle class, of which the MRT itself and other pseudo-leftist organizations are also a part.
The only way forward is to fight against the capitalist system, which is the source of universal claims by world representatives, to form an international alliance with other sectors of the Brazilian working class, and to support the teachers and staff of the federal education system. It's about building a movement. Ruling elites, including Lula's government, claim that there is “no money” for education and social services.
This objective condition of unity is emerging with increasing force in countless struggles around the world in connection with the process of globalization.
More than a million people marched in Argentina this week against Milay's attacks on universities and public education, and protests on countless university campuses against the massacre in Gaza face a massive crackdown by the Biden administration in the US are doing.
Teachers and staff of Brazilian universities must recognize this process of overcoming dead-end nationalism and parochial illusions propagated by trade unions and Brazil's pseudo-leftists, and the bourgeois character of Lula's government. The way to establish this unity is through rank-and-file committees with a socialist and internationalist perspective, united in the International Workers' Union of rank-and-file committees.
