Coalitional strategies in São Paulo: perspectives for a territorial renovation of unionism

Abstract

This project intends to study in São Paulo the ways how trade union officials engage themselves in territory-based coalition-building with other trade unions and organizations of other social movements. My hypothesis is that territorial coalitions, although incipient and with profound differences of patterns and appraisals over the trade union spectrum (between more or less rooted unions, between unions directed by the conception of "sindicalismo de resultados" and unions linked to the political left, between unions of precarious categories and unions of more qualified categories), bring perspectives for the fortification of unionism and the enlargement of it's interlocutions - mainly, the challenge of the approximation of unionism to the precariat. To take forward this research, I intend to: I) review the theoretical discussion over coalitional strategies, territorial struggles and the struggles of the precariat in Brazil and in the world; II) using semi-directed interviews, documental analysis and participation, whenever possible, in organizational meetings of the coalitions, to study the appraisal of union leaders on territorial coalitions, as well as concrete cases of these coalitions (their patterns, political balances, repertoires and frames). (AU)