263 © The Author(s) 2019 S. Berger et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Workers’ Participation at Plant Level, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48192-4_14 CHAPTER 14 Workers’ Participation at the Shop Floor Level and Trade Unions in Brazil: Economic Crisis and New Strategies of Political Action José Ricardo Ramalho INTRODUCTION 1 The organization of shop foor factory workers is directly linked to Brazil’s trade unionism, which has led to much innovation over the last four decades. The articulation of workers within companies guaranteed the legitimacy of trade union resistance to the authoritarianism of management and the political regime in the period of military governments in the 1960s and 1970s. The struggle to obtain this recognition and the support of other social movements allowed the construction of an alliance, which has been kept up until the pres- ent day, even in conjunctures of economic crisis and production restructuring. Under pressure from fexibilization, the precariousness of labor relations and the constant threat of closure or relocation on the part of companies, unions, and factory committees of the main industrial district in the country, ABC Paulista, have been demonstrating that it was and is possible to use the political rights obtained in the struggle for other goals to defend employment 1 The data, information, and interviews supporting this chapter are the partial fndings of research projects supported by the National Research Centre (CNPq) in Brazil as well as the Rio de Janeiro State Scientists Program (FAPERJ), institutions to which I am grateful. My gratitude also extends to my colleague Iram Jácome Rodrigues and to Brian Hazlehurst (BrianHaz.Rio@gmail.com) for the English translation. J. R. Ramalho (*) Institute of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil