Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva first made a name for himself as a union leader, calling mass strike movements of metallurgical workers during the 1970s.
Five decades later, Lula is on the other side of the issue. His administration is being hampered by a growing number of strikes and go-slow operations from civil servants who demand better pay. His government, however, is limited by budgetary constraints and has broken off negotiations with some disgruntled groups.
This week, we discuss the risks of strikes for the administration — especially for the government’s environmental agenda.
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Transcript of this episode (with Cockatoo)
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva first made a name for himself as a union leader, calling mass strikes of metallurgical workers during the 1970s. Five decades later, Lula is on the other side of the issue. His administration is being hampered by a growing number of strikes and ghost law operations from civil servants who demand better pay. His government, however, is limited by budgetary constraints and has broken off negotiations with some disgruntled groups.
This week, we discuss the risks of strikes for the administration, especially for the government’s environmental agenda. My name is Gustavo Ribeiro, I am the editor-in-chief of the Brazilian Report, and this is Explaining Brazil. If you like Explaining Brazil, you should subscribe to our website, which is the journalistic engine behind this podcast.
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This week I’m joined by Ewan Marshall, Deputy Editor of the Brazilian Report. Hello, Ewan. Hi, Gustavo. So, Brazil is experiencing a civil servant strike surge. Can you tell us a little more about what’s happening right now?
Yes, so over the past few years we’ve seen an increase in the number of civil servant strikes Threatening the government in the hope of getting more pay, better pay And we have seen action from workers in the central bank, multiple state-controlled companies, several cabinet ministries And the latest group to follow through on their strike threats is made up of workers from Brazil’s IBAMA Environmental Protection Agency, the Environment Ministry and the Chico Menges Biodiversity Institute.
And what do they want?
Well, they each have their own specific demands, of course, but in kind of broad strokes, the federal civil servants are demanding a pay rise of between 23 and 34 percent, and that would be paid in installments between 2024 and 2026. requesting for their career paths to be restructured so that they would have more pay raise opportunities in the future. So the government’s counter proposal was a maximum 19% pay rise by 2026 but with no change in their salaries this year because in 2023 the administration gave all federal workers a 9% raise across the board.
pretty generous raise doesn’t it? I mean inflation stood at 4.6% in 2023 and you don’t see many workers getting 9% raises in Brazil or I mean anywhere for that matter.
Yeah, well, the civil servant unions are arguing that their raises or their proposed raises wouldn’t make up for the losses that they had over the past few years when you discount for inflation because when you consider the wage freezes that we had during the former Jair Bolsonaro government.
Right, Ioan, but it’s not as if civil servants are in dire straits though, right? Especially and particularly, specifically federal workers.
Yeah, I mean, you’re right to make that distinction for federal workers because the wage gap between private workers and then civil servants at the state or municipal level is narrower actually than the world average but when we’re talking about federal workers, federal civil servants that’s different. In fact they actually earn on average twice as much as private workers in Brazil and that’s the average because the workers in the justice system they can get super
salaries that put them in the top 1% of the richest Brazilians. And let’s not forget that they also enjoy ironclad stability that no private worker does. And so, I mean, some argue that they want to have their cake and eat it too. So, we went in this quest for higher pay. A few
occupations got a leg up though, right? Yeah, so the federal marshals got a raise last year and tax auditors are also eligible for bigger bonuses but what that did is it just brought anger from other sectors of the public workforce and it’s kind of become a bit of a broader trend that could pose quite a lot of challenges for the Lula administration.
Such as?
Well I think one big topic for today I would like to discuss the strike of environmental workers in more detail today but first let’s just rewind a little bit to one of the previous high profile strikes which was that of central bank workers when they began go slow operations for better pay and that caused the release of economic indicators to be delayed. So these are like important measures that you know they serve as a compass for a lot of market agents in Brazil and also other areas felt the pinch, meat processing plants were affected by a go slow operation by agricultural inspectors
from January onward. It made the time that it takes to issue documents that you need to transport meat, that made that increase from 3.1 days to 5 days. Now while that may seem small, that additional delay does affect the entire chain and you know, often has an impact on final prices. Brazil’s tax appeals court, the CARF, had to postpone 55 trials due to walkouts staged by its tax auditors. In these trials, we’re talking about roughly 1.1 trillion reais at stake, that’s about $234 billion.
You mentioned you wanted to discuss the risks of strikes among environmental workers. What’s up with that?
Right, so yeah, this is probably the highest profile of these civil servant strikes at the moment because after seeing deforestation and fire rates drop in the Amazon and the Cerrado biomes in 2023, Brazil is at a risk of seeing a resurgence in the loss of native vegetation amid this strike that has been going on that we mentioned earlier by employees of IBAMA, which is the federal agency responsible for protecting and monitoring the environment. So since the Lula government has come into office it has sought to capitalize
on its international image of reclaiming Brazil’s environmental agenda, protecting the Amazon but at the same time it hasn’t agreed to raise the salaries of IBAMA’s approximately 4000 employees after a series of meetings and negotiations. And basically this unfolding crisis has had ripple effects on Brazil as a whole. It has reached the inspection operations that Obama carries out inside the forest because in February the coordinating team of Previfogo, which is a group of around 50 civil servants responsible for running operations and hiring firefighters
to deal with blazes around Brazil, they decided to suspend all of their field operations and you know that in itself has another ripple effect because it’s those employees who hire around 2,000 firefighters each year to contain fires throughout the country for six months during the dry season. And we are entering the dry season now right Ewan? Yeah and this strike couldn’t really come at a worse time because the federal government warned last week that an upcoming drought will be severely affecting both the Amazon Rainforest
and the Pantanal wetlands. According to Environment Minister Marina Silva, massive wildfires are expected in both of these biomes during the dry season which will run between now and September. To avoid a worst-case scenario, President Lula signed a pact with the governors of the Amazon and Pantanal biomes to try to prevent wildfires. The government wants to make sure that it’s mitigating the impact of these events on people. So for that, we’re talking about the risk of supply shortages.
And I think things are even made worse by the fact that both the Pantanal and the Amazon have endured massive droughts in recent years, which are getting more and more intense because of climate change. Can you tell us a bit more about this crisis both in the Pantanal wetlands and in the Amazon rainforest?
Yes, so it has been a difficult last few years for both these biomes. If we go back to 2020, roughly 23% of the Pantanal was destroyed by massive wildfires. If people or if listeners aren’t completely familiar with the biome, it’s the world’s largest tropical wetland and it’s also a hub for biodiversity, home to hundreds of different species of animals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, fish, you name it. And it’s also home to some of Brazil’s most famous animals like jaguars, toucans, jabirus, macaws, tapirs, alligators and many
many of them suffered from the effects of these widespread fires in 2020. And you know this situation just continues year after year because a month ago the National Water Agency declared a state of critical water shortage in the Paraguay River Basin which is where the Pantanal sits. And in some of these areas river levels are already at a six decade low. And you know so the dry season itself that ushers a spike in wildfires as one would assume. This year this dry period has already arrived quite early and also with quite devastating force. In the states of
Mato Grosso do Sul and Mato Grosso, fire outbreaks in the first 6 months of 2024 increased by over 1000% when compared to the same period in 2023. At the same time, the Paraguay River is at levels more than 2 meters below average. And in Mato Grosso do Sul, that’s where about 60% of the Pantanal is located on the Brazilian side of the border, there were 698 fire outbreaks recorded between January and June of this year. Last year in that same period there were 62. In Mato Grosso, which is the other state just slightly to the north, there were 495 fires in 2024 so far and in 2023 there were just 44.
And can you give us some perspective on the extent of the damage?
Yes, so the Paraguay River Basin that covers about 48% of the state of Mato Grosso and 52% of Mato Grosso do Sul and the Paraguay’s hydrographic network makes up around 4.3% of the Brazilian territory. That’s the Paraguay River Basin.
Right. And what about the Amazon? Because, I mean, the Amazon has also suffered a lot with wildfires, with droughts.
Yeah, I mean, last year the Amazon had its worst drought in history in a lot of parts of the river basin. Some river levels went far below those of the same period in 2010, which for most people who can remember was the worst drought in the Amazon before last year. And so what happens in the Amazon when you have such a severe drought is the entire cities are just cut off from the rest of Brazil because the state basically runs via rivers, relies on its rivers for people to get around, for people to receive and send supplies and
so a lot of these places suffered from severe shortages and also the shipment of goods manufactured in the duty free zone in Manaus, which is the state capital of Amazonas. That was disrupted because the rivers were too low. You couldn’t get these big ships through to the ports in Manaus.
Now Ewan, is it fair to say that we are facing a very dangerous cocktail of environmental workers in ghost low mode and a worrisome drought scenario? I mean, not only dangerous for Brazil but the entire climate as a whole.
Yeah, it is worrying. According to ASEMA, which is a union representing environmental workers, the area of the Amazon degraded due to activities such as fires, mining and logging has increased almost 17 times in the first four months of 2024 compared to the same period last year, but the number of environmental fines issued in that period plummeted by 66%. So the Union says that these numbers are a direct result of the ghost lows from environmental workers.
A stark contrast to 2023 results, right?
Yeah, I mean there was quite a lot to celebrate I think for Brazil last year because the country percent less primary forest in 2023 than in 2022 according to data from the University of Maryland’s Global Land Analysis and Discovery Lab. That was published in April. The decline meant that last year saw Brazil hit its lowest level of primary forest loss since 2015.
And according to our reporting though, these deforestation spikes you’re talking about are not the only possible risks posed by these strikes, right?
Yeah, I mean we’ve covered, particularly one of our contributors, Andre Barges, he in January obtained a memo from the Mines and Energy Ministry warning the Environment Ministry that delays in environmental licensing process could affect activities in hydroelectric power plants and ultimately pose a threat to the country’s power supply. So, you know, that’s another reason that the strike could be interfering with Brazil’s proper functioning because, you know, hydroelectric plants, after all, they account for about 70% of the electricity consumed in Brazil.
And do you see a way out of this hot mess, at least in the short term?
Yeah, well, I mean, after six frustrating months of negotiations, the Brazilian government has now announced that it’s halting talks with the workers from these federal environmental agencies. What we could see then is a general strike in response and that could properly jeopardise the environmental efforts in the country. But the Lula administration has so far sought to showcase its green commitments, its promises to end deforestation in the Amazon by 2030 and its promises to make Brazil’s energy matrix carbon neutral. But it seems like the government’s resistance
to meeting the demands of these environmental workers at this point reveals some of its true concerns about the climate crisis.
Well, Ewan, thank you very much and we will be following the developments of this crisis on the Brazilian report.
Thanks, Gustavo.
Ewan Marshall is the Brazilian report’s deputy editor. And if you like explaining Brazil, you should give us a 5-star rating wherever you get your podcasts. Or better yet, you should subscribe to the Brazilian Report, the journalistic engine behind this podcast. We have a subscription-based business model and your memberships fuel our journalism and keep us going and growing.
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Go to Brazilian.Report. I am Gustavo Ribeiro. Thanks for listening. Explaining Brazil will be back next week.
you… We are not going to let you go. We are not going to let you go.
We are not going to let you go. And for every single unconfident person in Pacaembu, we would make ten confident workers here. I think that this happened because in this land.
They said that the working class’ salary was to blame for inflation. They threw away our salary for 15 years and the inflation is still as high as it was before 1974.
in 1964.
The multinational services ended the sacred rights that the worker had, or more importantly, which was the stability in employment. And the multinational services were implanted in this land, the guarantee fund for the service that only works to make the boss send the workers away with much more ease. And it is enough that we see the situation of public officials today, when the government offers 30% increase and 20% discount,
and the workers would receive 8 comma I don’t know what on top of the current salary. It is enough to look ahead and see the situation of the garbageman, the one who carries the garbage of the authorities in Pacaembu and then has nothing to eat. It is enough to see the bus drivers who are demonstrating. The stage of misery in which the government took all that balance of wages. of 1979.
May we live the greatest moment of the Brazilian working class. May we live the greatest moment of the Brazilian working class.
