Joaos // Huge truck drivers strike in Brazil in May 2018

31.5.18

Huge truck drivers strike in Brazil in May 2018: [libcom.org] The initial reason for the strike was the increases caused by the price policy of diesel oil, which became directly linked to the speculative volatility of the oil in the international market (that is, the price variation seemed to be a bitcoin) and also the exchange rate of the Dollar against the Real.

The truck drivers (46% self-employed and 53% employed) have been brutally affected, because the oil supply to the trucks is paid out of their pocket. The strike is gigantic, it affects the whole country, literally. It's stopping the whole economy.

But at the outset, carrier businessmen participated or even led the strike because they also have interests in inter-capitalist competition with oil companies and with government. So there was a lot of doubt whether it was a lockout or a strike, also because strangely the bourgeois media and the police even seemed to support it, unlike any other type of strike, which is always presented on television as vandalism or even crime. The strike was then manipulated as an object of bargaining to serve the interests of businessmen (eg. employers' claims regarding paying less labor rights, como a "reonera��o da folha de pagamento").