Brazil: Prepare for the General Strike of National Resistance!
We hereby share an unofficial translation of a statement published by the Workers’ League.
The working class in our country continues to fight to defend and realize rights won over decades. It is also fighting to expand achievements such as the struggle to reduce working hours without reducing wages. In recent weeks, we have witnessed important demonstrations of strength and willingness to fight by the working class in the country, such as the strikes by workers at BYD, Petrobras, the Post Office, and against the privatization of COPASA (MG).
The achievements of the working class in our country throughout history were not gifts from governments or concessions from the bourgeoisie, but the direct result of strikes, mobilizations, and confrontations.
The minimum wage, for example, was already a central demand in the General Strike of 1917. Although it was only instituted in 1936, its purpose was to ensure the survival of workers and their families. Today, the current minimum wage falls far short of what is necessary, contrary even to the calculations of DIEESE (Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies), based on the constitution, which predict a minimum wage of R$ 7,067.18 (for November 2025), while the government tries to mask this reality with talk of a “real increase.”
Paid vacations were also the result of struggle, appearing on the agenda of the 1917 General Strike, being partially achieved in 1925 and expanded over the following decades. The same was true of the eight-hour working day, a historic banner of the working class throughout the world, marked by the martyrdom of Chicago workers in 1886. In Brazil, although formalized in the 1934 Constitution, this achievement was accompanied by limitations and setbacks over time.
Paid weekly rest, job security, and FGTS [Translator’s note: Length-of-Service Guarantee Fund, social security] clearly illustrate how the system uses real “Trojan horses.”
The FGTS, created in 1966, was presented as protection for workers, but in practice, it served to dismantle job security by replacing a historic right with a false financial guarantee. Today, job security remains only in a limited form for some sectors and specific situations.
The 13th month salary, another major achievement, was a direct result of the General Strike of July 5, 1962, despite fierce opposition from the mainstream media, which predicted economic disasters that never materialized. The same can be said of retirement and pensions, initially won by railroad workers and civil servants and later expanded, but today under attack by so-called “reforms” that take away rights and make it difficult to access benefits.
Even during periods of severe repression, such as during the civil-military regime that plagued the country for 21 long years (1964-1985), the working class found ways to fight and resist in order to win and maintain their rights.
Currently, all these rights are being systematically trampled on by reactionaries and their allies, who seek to maintain the concentration of income in the hands of a minority of tycoons.
Given this scenario, it is up to class-conscious and democratic fighters to organize the masses, resist each attack, and prepare for a General Strike of National Resistance. In this way, we take definitive steps to overthrow this economic policy, without any illusions in false promises. We must build the General Strike of National Resistance. Guided by an authentic and determined vanguard, we will be able to bring down this anti-people’s economic and social policy, which sells out the country and submits to imperialism, mainly Yankee imperialism!
