Different economic cycles shaped the various Brazilian regions over our history, producing a complex gamut of professional categories with several levels of skills.
In mining, timber, and agriculture, labor integrated with our natural diversity, transforming the very shape of our land, too often in a conflicting and devastating way.
Workers’ hands built, bit by bit, public facilities, transport networks, energy networks, and communication networks, and gave life to financial and commercial activities, enabling the country to operate as an integrated economic and social system.
Industrial development in Brazil is complex and unequal, combining market growth, technological progress and craftsmanship.
The efforts and sweat of million of workers in formal and informal economy, public and private sectors, fields and cities drive the Brazilian economy and society. As they build this country, working men and women are faced with tough working conditions, inequity, and prejudice in their daily struggle.
The situation is often aggravated by unequal opportunities based on ethnical origin or gender, and by the exploitation of child labor.
But it is also at workplaces and with work experiences that the ties that build the identity and the strength of the working class are forged and re-forged.