The nineties marked deep transformations in the Brazilian economy. The new technological and competitive patterns of the global trade have shaken companies and union movements forcing changes in managerial strategies, work administration, representation relationships, job market, and labor legislation. From a short bibliographic survey this paper intends to characterize the historical, institutional, and political bases of the Brazilian work relations system. I do this trying to build an analytical reference to understand the impact of the current transformations in the correlation of forces that impose changes to those work relations and its legislation. Such changes affected our weak social and work rights negatively increasing the already rooted forms of precarious and flexible work.
Work relationships; Syndicalism; Deregulation; Loss of rights