ABSTRACT
This article analyzes the role of pickets in two of the most emblematic strikes in Brazilian labor history: the “strike of the 400,000,” which involved several industry sectors in São Paulo and neighboring cities in 1957, and the 1980 “forty-one days strike,” involving the metalworkers of the ABC Paulista, in the metropolitan area of the city of São Paulo. Both strikes broke out at a time of profound reconfiguration of Brazilian society, marked by the processes of industrialization, migration, and urbanization. Although separated by a time gap of almost twenty-five years, both the “strike of the 400,000” and the “forty-one days strike” reveal important aspects of continuities in the performances and the organizational repertoires of the workers in São Paulo.
Keywords:
Strikes; Pickets; Workers, Trade Unions.