A construção cotidiana da greve na UFRGS : o movimento contra as reformas no final de 2016

Abstract

Esta Dissertação foi desenvolvida em meio a um importante ciclo de protestos de oposição ao governo que usurpou o poder com o golpe parlamentar concretizado em 31 de agosto de 2016. Entre as diversas ações para implementar o novo pacto se encontram a PEC do Fim do Mundo e a Reforma do Ensino Médio. Com isso, uma onda de ocupações estudantis tomou conta de escolas, universidades e institutos tecnológicos. Provocados pelo exemplo da mobilização estudantil, técnicos e docentes da maioria das instituições federais de ensino superior deflagraram suas greves. Na Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), a greve dos técnicos durou 44 dias, e a dos docentes 21. Esta pesquisa militante assume a defesa que Lefebvre (2014) faz do cotidiano como categoria de análise e do marxismo também como conhecimento crítico da vida cotidiana. A experiência concreta da realidade, o ‘vivido’, representa o mundo percebido, a focalização da consciência em uma prática. Seu contraponto dialético é o ‘viver’, a virtualidade projetada, fruto das expectativas de um futuro desejado (LEFEBVRE, 2014). O estudo da greve, através da vida cotidiana – este lugar de transição, encontros interações e conflitos -, permite compreender sua construção desde baixo, a partir do vivido e do viver, do individual e do coletivo. Além disto, destacamos as ações e práticas que suspendiam a repetição e desafiavam a alienação a partir da coesão que brota da tomada de consciência das possibilidades que o coletivo constrói ao se organizar para tentar mudar a realidade com a qual se confronta.

The study that originated the present Dissertation was developed amid an important national cycle of protests in opposition to a constitutional amendment that established a spending limit the growth of federal government spending to the rate of inflation for 20 years, and to a bill introducing radical changes in high school curriculum. Both reforms were proposed by the government that took power after the Brazilian parliamentary coup of May 2016 and were approved by the National Congress at the end of this year. These projects were opposed by massive student’s movements and university strikes, among others. In the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Porto Alegre, Brazil), a technical-administrative staff strike lasted 44 days, and a teachers strike 21 days. We were part of the strike commands – one of us is from administrative staff (and an MSc student at that time) and the other is a teacher. We are also members of the Organization and Liberating Practice research group, based at the School of Administration, in which Marx and Marxist authors have been studied, such as Henri Lefebvre. Therefore, it was obvious that we could interconnect these two spaces (activism and academy) based on Lefebvre’s (2014) propositions on the critique of everyday life. The aim of this activist research was to analyze the everyday construction of these strikes, considering the living and the lived experience of workers and its meaning to transform potentially their everyday life. Lefebvre (2014) provided the theoretical framework to analyze conflicts, practices, ruptures, discontinuities, repetitions and creations, mainly through categories such as ambiguity, alienation, moments and possibilities Data were collected throughout the strikes and was supplemented with social network information and interviews with members from the strike commands after the end of movements. The rupture with everyday labor by rote, the recognition on the importance of cohesion beyond the hierarchies determined by the university structure, and the horizon widening of possibilities for the movement participants were some of the conclusions. Another relevant aspect is that these strikes were not organized in defense or to achieve goals directly related to labor conditions. They were organized together with the student movement that occupied more than 40 buildings in different campuses in defense of the education system, providing a space for mutual recognition that went beyond tactic alliances involving the three sectors of the university community. The everyday collective construction of this movement became evident the importance and potentialities of articulating and supporting each other in each specific struggle workplace while simultaneously being intensively involved with the wider context of social struggles.