SINDICATO DOS PETROLEIROS DO RIO DE JANEIRO
Address: Avenida Presidente Vargas, 52, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ.
Themes: Unions and Workers
Translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Snyder
The Oil Workers’ Union of Rio de Janeiro (SINDIPETRO-RJ) was one of the organized labor groups most targeted by civilian and military conservatives that took power in 1964. Like the metal workers and the workers in steelmaking industries in the region, oil workers gained visibility throughout the 1950s and the early 1960s by means of their large mobilizing capacity and the advances in political consciousness-building. In 1964, oil workers represented one of the key sectors of the political-ideological clashes that culminated in the civil-military coup of the same year. Not by coincidence, the Armed Forces invaded the entity’s headquarters soon after, occupying the building for 17 days. All union files were confiscated, and the board directors who were linked to the PCB were removed from power, forced to flee in order to avoid prison. The union remained under control of the Ministry of Labor until 1968.
The trajectory of the Rio de Janeiro SINDIPETRO is intertwined with the history of oil exploration in Brazil. In the late 1940s, a dispute over whether to maintain the state oil monopoly or sell the natural resources to foreign multinationals began. In the years that followed, the campaign “The Oil is Ours” gained strength, spreading through the entire country and, in 1953, Petrobrás was created. In the second half of the 1950s, oil workers from the Manguinhos Refinery, a private company founded in December 1954, organized, fighting for better wages and work conditions. Manguinhos’ first strike took place in 1958, marking the group’s struggles. During the same year, the Professional Oil Workers’ Association of Rio de Janeiro was founded. Soon after, on March 23rd, 1959, the ‘Oil Workers’ Union of Rio de Janeiro was founded. The next year, SINDIPETRO-RJ came to also represent the Petrobrás workers. The first two branches of the union were established in São Cristovão and the third in Cinelândia, on Alcindo Guanabara Street. Later, the third branch would be moved to Presidente Vargas Avenue, then finally settle on Passos Avenue, in the downtown part of the city.
SINDIPETRO-RJ was present at the main political events that marked the pre-1964 era. It participated actively, for example, in the “Center Station Rally,” which occured on March 13th, 1964. Linked to the General Command of Workers (CGT), the entity also carried out a series of strikes, among them a shutdown in solidarity with the Guarapuava oil workers in Paraná, which took place in November 1963 (Badaró, 2004).
With military action against SINDIPETRO, union leadership and workers experienced persecution, imprisonment, torture, and layoffs. The organization’s president, Fernando Autran, known for being one of the main oil worker leaders, was able to seek asylum in the Uruguayan embassy. In an interview given to TV Petroleira, he acknowledged that he doesn’t like to touch on the subject of the torture and imprisonments he went through during the military regime. He was first imprisoned on the border of Rio Grande do Sul with Uruguay. In Porto Alegre, Autran was interrogated in the Army premises. After the interrogation, the unionist was left locked up, naked, without a shower, in a dark, cold room. In his words:
When you “land” here, the first thing that they do is take off your clothes to break your morale. At night, the rats and cockroaches would come. The cockroaches would eat our skin. They attack more than the rats. The next morning, it burned like hell (Fernando Autran, Interview given to TV Petroleira on September 24th, 2014).
He remained imprisoned for three months in the Political and Social Order of Porte Alegre Police Station (DOPS), a place where he endured repeated physical and psychological torture. By now, the oil workers had experienced persecution carried out by the soldiers that had taken control of Petrobrás. During an interview with the National Truth Commission (CNV) in partnership with the State Truth Commission of Rio de Janeiro (CEV-Rio), the oil worker union leader, Francisco Soriano, a militant with the Brazilian Revolutionary Communist Party (PCBR), relates the abuses committed by Petrobrás soon after the coup erupted :
The employees endured horrors. They would ask: where is so-and-so? Generally, the unions have the so-called advisors on the board of directors, and those poor devils suffered a lot. And Petrobrás was considered a strategic sector. It was a witch hunt. At Petrobrás, they removed 17 high-ranking officials, among them generals and colonels, to promote the purging, the cleansing. They created broad investigation commissions. The person would go to testify and, upon leaving, would already receive their letter of dismissal or suspension. In the worst case scenario, they would be asked to collaborate. Some went to the other side (Francisco Soriano. Testimony given to Alejandra Estevez and Vítor Guimarães on August 18th, 2014).
As confirmed by the CNV, the monitoring of public sector companies by the Security & Intelligence Advisory Councils (ASI) led to the dismissal and imprisonment of hundreds of workers. This agency created files that tracked workers’ political actions. Any activity could be considered an “incriminating” fact to put on the employee’s file, such as participating in a union assembly or reading a newspaper considered to be suspicious.
The monitoring undertaken by Petrobrás’ Division of Intelligence (DSI), which acted as an arm of the National Intelligence Service (SNI) as pointed out in the CNV report, shows how large state companies became “laboratories” for implanting the system of control and repression. In 1964, approximately three thousand Petrobrás workers were suspected of “subversion”. Of these, 712 of the names were listed in a Military Police Investigation (IPM) established to investigate the political activities of the state company. From April to October of 1964, around 1500 prosecution investigations began targeting Petrobrás employees, and 516 employees were fired as a result. The monitoring of Petrobrás workers generated 131,277 files of social-political control produced by the intelligence agencies. According to the CNV, “there is, therefore, evidence that Petrobrás organized, already in the first days after the coup, a new repressive system, possibly reproduced in other large companies” (CNV Collection, 2014, p. 13-14).
In 1967, oil worker activists tried to take back control of the union. After the Ministry of Labor, under the command of Colonel Jarbas Passarinho, allowed for free elections in unions to occur, the “Azul” slate in opposition to the military intervention in the union declared itself the winner. However, it was prevented from taking office, due to alleged fraud in the elections. The entity, then, continued under military control. Francisco Soriano was one of the members of the winning slate prevented from taking office. According to him, the entire slate was fired, causing the winning leadership to lose ties with the entity. Soriano served in the union between 1965-1968, until he was fired and left Petrobrás (CNV Collection, 2014).
Soon after the kidnapping of U.S. Ambassador Charles Elbrick, in 1969, repressive agencies intensified their persecution of activists engaged in the armed struggle. Fernando Autran, who lived in hiding with a false identity, became a wanted man. According to him, it must have been the directors of Petrobrás, under the command of Marshal Waldemar Levy Cardoso, who sent his photo to be published in the newspaper Correio da Manhã. His family started to receive threats, and, under threat, the union member had to turn himself in. He was taken to the Department of Information Operations – Center for Internal Defense Operations (DOI-CODI) and then to the Barão de Mesquita barrack. According to his testimony, he must have been imprisoned in place of Fernando Gabeira, who was involved in the kidnapping of the U.S. ambassador.
Throughout the dictatorial regime, oil workers continued laboring under intense surveillance, making it impossible for them to organize in their union. However, during the Geisel and Figueiredo governments, the oil workers were very engaged in the redemocratization movement, such as in the 1984 Direct (Elections) Now campaign. On April 10th, in the midst of the movement for elections, a crowd gathered near the Candelária Church to demand the right to vote in the presidential elections. At the same time, the union headquarters was the target of attempted arson, an attack that remains a mystery to this day. There were three arson attempts, and the criminals were seen running away on the roof of the building (Surgente, 2006). When the military regime ended, the union moved forward with its activism, carrying out a series of strikes, such as one that took place in 1988, an occasion in which seven oil workers were fired for having organized a shutdown. Some of them, including Jorge Eduardo, Eduardo Machado, and Emanuel Cancella would later became directors of the entity.
A new phase of the struggle began with the deepening of the neoliberal economic project under Fernando Collor de Mello’s administration. The beginning of the 1990s was marked by an attempt to dismantle the Petrobrás system. With the business administrative reform, thousands of oil workers were laid off. The union played a crucial role in the fight for reintegrating workers who were laid off and in their involvement with the Remove Collor campaign. The privatization of oil companies like Nitriflex and Petroflex left thousands of workers unemployed. SINDIPETRO-RJ and SINDIPETRO of Caxias resisted, occupying the headquarters of Interbrás in 1990. The group managed to reverse hundreds of layoffs. In the following year, the oil workers declared a national strike, demanding the suspension of the privatizations and the reintegration of laid-off workers. The strikers occupied the headquarters of Petrobrás for 44 days, experiencing heavy retaliation that was reminiscent of repressive moments from the violent “Years of Lead.”
The fight against privatization continued in the next governments of Itamar Franco and Fernando Henrique Cardoso. It was a period marked by large strikes, negotiations, defeats, and some victories. In a strike that lasted 32 days, during Cardoso’s administration, Army tanks entered the refineries. It is worth highlighting that this strike became a paradigm for the history of twentieth century Brazilian workers movements. As the moment unfolded, other groups of oil workers joined the cause. With the money acquired from the reimbursement of fine payments that the Superior Labor Court (TST) had imposed on the union during the strike, SINDIPETRO-RJ was able to remodel the building that today is the entity’s headquarters. It is located on Passos Avenue, 34, in downtown Rio de Janeiro.
In 2003, Lula’s administration marked a new phase. Among the many actions SINDIPETRO-RJ took in this important moment, fighting against the continued auctioning of the National Agency of Petroleum (ANP) and attacks on retired workers rights stands out. The union also fought to ensure the continued nationalization of oil, with the campaign “Oil Must Be Ours.” The entity still participates heavily in social activism, frequently promoting large public demonstrations, educational materials, debates, and major events. It is a reference in the national trade union movement, and works alongside social movements all over the country.