In 2015, a strike in the civil service paralyzed classes and delayed INSS benefits

The last major mobilization of federal public servants in Brazil was in 2015, still at the beginning of the second Dilma Rousseff (PT) presidency. At that time, as now, the mobilization sought to include a salary readjustment in the federal budget for the following year.

Initiated between May and July, the movement gained support from civil servants and, at the end of August, resulted in difficulties in scheduling social security benefits, stoppages in universities and technical schools and the suspension of inspection activities at ports, airports and borders.

In all, federal employees totaled 12,100 idle hours that year, according to monitoring by Dieese (Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies). It was the longest downtime in since the beginning of the entity’s historical series, which began in 1983.

It was not, however, a coordinated, unified movement.

At federal universities, 2015 was the longest strike in history, which lasted 139 days and ended in early October. In 2022, full professors of higher education also joined the mobilization of servers.

However, in the opinion of Dieese coach Rodrigo Linhares, who monitors the strike movements, there has been some demobilization in universities since then, aggravated by the pandemic. “There was a sequence of long-lasting strikes, which disorganized the university calendars. Then, economic crises and now pandemic and remote classes”, he says.

At the INSS, the civil servants’ strike lasted almost three months and even resulted in the closing of branches. Before the technicians and social security agents returned to work, the medical experts folded their arms, and remained that way for more than four months.

It was only in early 2016 that the services were carried out again, which delayed the granting of disability benefits that require this type of examination.

The various categories that stopped that year returned to work after accepting the government’s proposal for a readjustment of 5.5% in 2016 and 5% in 2017, which, at the time, compensated for the inflation of the period.

Before that, in 2015, another great strike of great adhesion had been carried out in 2012. It was the second year of the first term of the Dilma government, and the civil servants closed an agreement to receive a 15.8% readjustment until 2015, in three installments.

​Now, in 2022, the Dieese coach assesses, a situation of animosity of the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) administration towards public servants ends up creating a favorable scenario for a new movement of great adhesion.

“Faced with a government that refuses to negotiate and that not only antagonizes the public servant but also creates discomfort by granting readjustments only to a part, the risk of a new strike is increasing”, he says.

For him, the federal government ends up committing a strategic error when establishing antagonism as a practice, which ends up giving uniqueness to the claims.

“The federal government has an immense difficulty in negotiating. There is a bad will and a posture of repudiation even in relation to those who are direct employees of the Executive.

A common point of strikes, says Linhares, whether in the public or private sphere, is that they mostly start with demands for better wages. When the movements come from workers in the private sector, the second frequent reason is work stoppages due to salary delays.

Among public servants, in addition to a salary increase, state employees ask for the implementation or fulfillment of a job and salary plan and improvement in conditions and in the workplace.

In 2022, the trigger for the beginning of the mobilizations was Bolsonaro’s decision to grant readjustments only to federal police officers, an important category for the president’s political base.

Since the end of December, employees of the Federal Revenue Service began to deliver leadership positions, and the mobilization spread to other categories, also reaching the base of the federal civil service.

The Dieese survey also shows an acceleration in the number of strikes in the civil service — at the federal, municipal and state levels — as of 2013, a year marked by a series of street demonstrations throughout Brazil. That year, 796 strikes by civil servants were carried out throughout Brazil, 37 of them in the federal civil service.