Brazil's workers are faced with the impossibility of the economic system and the future Bolsonaro government to generate the necessary jobs for the economically active population and eliminate the precariousness of the work imposed by the neoliberal economic model in force since 1990. How to make the Brazilian economic system and the future government to generate the necessary jobs for the economically active population and how to eliminate the precariousness of the work imposed by the neoliberal economic model? The answer to these two questions is presented in this article.

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UNEMPLOYMENT AND PRECARIOUS WORK MUST CONTINUE IN
BRAZIL
Fernando Alcoforado*
Brazil's workers are faced with the impossibility of the economic system and the future
Bolsonaro government to generate the necessary jobs for the economically active
population and eliminate the precariousness of the work imposed by the neoliberal
economic model in force since 1990. How to make the Brazilian economic system and
the future government to generate the necessary jobs for the economically active
population and how to eliminate the precariousness of the work imposed by the
neoliberal economic model? The answer to these two questions is presented in the
paragraphs below.
Brazil has an economically active population of 90.6 million of which 36.3%, or 32.9
million of the private sector workers have work contracts, with a formal contract and
44% or 40 million workers are in an informal situation, that is, they do not enjoy labor
rights. Unemployment is 12.7 million workers and the economically active
underutilized population is 27.6 million workers. This means that the number of
discouraged workers who have stopped seeking work is 14.9 million workers. These
figures show that the situation of the working class in Brazil is very serious. 44% of the
economically active population is self-employed in the provision of services. This
situation was exacerbated by the economic crisis that broke out in Brazil since 2014 and
caused the Brazilian economy to face the biggest recession in the history of Brazil.
In order to overcome the current recessive crisis, which is the main cause of
unemployment and underutilization of Brazilian workers, the future government should
immediately implement a broad program of public infrastructure works (energy,
transportation, housing, basic sanitation, etc.) to raise levels employment and income of
the population and, as a consequence, to promote the expansion of household
consumption resulting from the increase in the wage bill and the income of companies
with investments in public works. The federal government should attract the private
sector to invest in energy, transportation and communications infrastructure that
requires resources of R$ 1.6 trillion to reduce the cost of its logistics. The increase in
the wage bill and the adoption of a credit policy will encourage the consumer to buy
more. The public works program would increase productive capacity and increase
investment in industry, contribute to raise commercial activity and services, as well as
to raise the levels of government tax collection.
In addition to the public works program, the Brazilian government needs to take urgent
measures to combat economic stagnation, which would contemplate the following: 1)
promote a broad export program, especially agribusiness and the mineral sector; 2)
drastically reduce bank interest rates to encourage household consumption and
investment by companies; and (3) to reduce the tax burden by freezing public sector
high salaries, cutting off of stewardship and of organs of public administration, and the
reduction of interest payments and the amortization of public debt to be renegotiated
with public debt creditors. To keep inflation under its control, the Brazilian government
should encourage the domestic production of goods and services and when it is
insufficient to carry out imports to combat demand inflation.
In addition to the measures described above, the future Bolsonaro government should
simultaneously solve the problem of the deficit of the public accounts that would

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contemplate, on the one hand, the increase of the public collection with: 1) taxation of
large fortunes with assets over 1 billion reais that could yield approximately 100 billion
reais per year; and (2) an increase in the tax on banks whose profits have been
stratospheric and, on the other, to reduce government spending by: 1) drastically
reducing the number of ministries and public agencies and expenditures at all levels of
government; and (2) a drastic reduction of the basic interest rate of the economy (Selic)
to reduce the size of public debt and the burden of paying interest and amortizing public
debt. The Bolsonaro government proposes to drastically reduce the number of ministries
and public agencies and expenditures at all levels of government, but will hardly tax
large fortunes and increase the tax on banks because its Minister of Economy, Paulo
Guedes , is committed to the rich and to the banks.
The leaders of the future government need to understand that in an exceptional situation
like the current one there is the imperative necessity of planning the national
development to resume the development of the Country. The Brazilian government
should elaborate an economic plan that contributes to the resumption of the
development of Brazil presenting for the population and for the productive sectors a
perspective of overcoming the current crisis and resumption of economic growth. It is
the lack of a development plan one of the factors that leads to the immobility of the
private sector in the realization of investments in Brazil leading to a true paralysis. The
development plan should guide and coordinate the country's companies that, organized
in networks, and aided by trade, technology and credit policies, can compete
successfully in the national and global economy.
Taking into account the speech of the future Minister of Economy of the government
Jair Bolsonaro, Paulo Guedes, who is a fundamentalist of neoliberalism, the federal
government will not take an active role as inducer of economic growth, drawing up a
development plan with the adoption of the measures presented above to promote the
reactivation of the economy and raise employment levels in Brazil. According to the
Bolsonaro government program, the starting point for combating unemployment is to
tackle the country's fiscal imbalance. According to Bolsonaro, the stimulus for
investment, growth and employment generation will come from the reversal of the
public deficit, achieved through spending cuts, reduction of tax breaks and sale of
public assets. These measures are insufficient to reactivate the Brazilian economy.
Regarding the precariousness of labor relations in Brazil and in the world, it is
important to note that it resulted from the neoliberal policies adopted that led to a
reduction in the supply of employment and loss of labor benefits. The forms of
precariousness of labor relations are manifold, such as the fact that most of the workers
do not have a contract of employment, there is open and veiled unemployment, there is
an extension of working hours, there is an intensification of the conditions of work,
there is the outsourcing of work and there is fragmentation of the working class and the
consequent difficulties of organization. As a result, neoliberal policies have weakened
trade unionism, that is, the organization of workers in the struggle for their interests and
rights. The establishment of neoliberalism in the world occurred with the purpose of
promoting the exponential increase in the appropriation of the economic surplus by the
great capital at the expense of the workers.
The economic crisis that broke out in Brazil in 2014 brought to the workers the weight
of the biggest recession in history that has caused companies to adopt, as a first step, to
dispense workers. In the years of growth that preceded the crisis, profits have multiplied

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and at the time of recession, companies do not even use a share of retained earnings to
maintain employment. On the contrary, they immediately dismiss thousands of workers,
as if the right to employment is not a fundamental right for the vast majority of the
population, who live on their labor. Neoliberal policies also produced a major process of
proletarianization of broad middle-class sectors, impoverished by the loss of formal
employment and the concentration of income resulting from the policies implemented
by the various governments in Brazil.
The Michel Temer government contributes to the neo-liberal labor reforms in force and
the future Jair Bolsonaro government will contribute to the reforms that will come to
precarious labor relations in Brazil. . The president-elect, Jair Bolsonaro, who voted in
favor of the labor reform that ended 100 items of CLT-Consolidation of Labor Laws,
says that it is better to have precarious employment than to have nothing. His proposal
to combat the unemployment drama calls for the creation of a "green and yellow" labor
portfolio with less labor rights. This proposal foresees that every young person entering
the labor market may choose between an employment relationship based on the
traditional blue work permit, which guarantees all labor rights, or opt for the green and
yellow work portfolio, and with this , to lose a series of labor rights..
In Brazil today, there is therefore no prospect of a solution to unemployment and
precarious work during the Jair Bolsonaro administration because the federal
government will not take an active role as an inducer of economic growth to promote
the reactivation of the economy and the elevation of levels of employment in Brazil,
besides acting in the reduction of workers' current rights. The workers and their
organizations have no other action than to try to stop neoliberal labor reforms through
their representatives in Parliament and the Judiciary, strengthen trade union
organization and, in the future, fight to change the correlation of forces in Parliament
and elect a President of the Republic committed to the interests of the workers.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 78, holder of the CONFEA / CREA System Medal of Merit, member of the Bahia
Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the
University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business
planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is the author of 14 books addressing issues
such as Globalization and Development, Brazilian Economy, Global Warming and Climate Change, The
Factors that Condition Economic and Social Development, Energy in the world and The Great Scientific,
Economic, and Social Revolutions that Changed the World.