[Note: The following interview is reprinted from O Trabalo newspaper, published by the O Trabalho current of the Brazilian Workers Party (PT).]
Q: How do you evaluate the results of the first round elections on Oct. 6th?
Lourival Pereira: It is very different from 1998. At the time what we did was wage a campaign of hope. We wanted a PT government because we thought that with this government, everything would be resolved. We thought that it would put an end to the policies of privatization initiated by the Britto government.
We elected Olivio Dutra, the first PT governor of the state. It is necessary that we remember that he did not fully correspond to our expectations. He did not know how to dialogue with the base. Maybe he was surrounded by people who thought they knew everything. We had hoped that with participatory democracy our arguments and our demands would finally be taken into account.
And our demands were nothing extraordinary: We demanded only the recuperation of the salary losses we had suffered (our salaries had not been adjusted for two years at the time) and an end to the Britto concessions to private businesses. After a few months, seeing nothing happen, we woke up -- because, in fact, we had been dreaming -- and we complained. From that moment on, we were never invited again to the "participatory budget" meetings. The previous government fired me and I have still not been rehired to this day. I say all this not to diminish the importance of this magnificent first round vote, but because the experience should serve for something. With a PT government - and I am hoping we will have one after October 27th - we must totally preserve the independence of our organizations. Things will not come from above.
Q: At the outset of the PT government in your state, your union drew up a document demonstrating how a privatized company could be put back on its feet as a public enterprise.
Lourival Pereira: That's true. Our union is active in two companies: Cesa, which belongs to the state of Rio Grande do Sul, and Banrisul Armazens, controlled by the state bank. Cesa is in a state of advanced degradation. The Britto government favored the private sector for years. He did not dismantle Cesa, but he pushed it in the direction of bankruptcy.
When the PT took over the state government in 1998, the union sent a very detailed report, indicating everything that was necessary -- down to the smallest screw -- in order to revive the company. It would have cost R$3 million. The government sent a project to the Legislative Assembly with R$20 million allotted to "clean up" the company. Except that it did not include the renovation of equipment. Everything was to pay back debts.
We went to talk to the government representatives. Since they talked so much about participatory democracy, it was time to demonstrate what that was. We said: anyone who can pay 20 million can pay 23 million, which is what was needed. But they told us that the time to present amendments had passed, and that is how it remained. The company has no more debt, but it has no means to compete in the market with the private companies.
Q: Were you driven to strike and to demonstrate against the PT-led government to get them to hear your demands?
Lourival Pereira: We have a collective bargaining agreement, which is a conquest. But we have to renew it every year, as it has not be written into law. In six years we have accumulated a salary imbalance. The last contract is from 1996. The one from 1997 was sent, at the time, to the Labor Board, and we lost. The same thing happened with the one for 1998. In 1999, we obtained a 17.9% wage increase -- but he government (this time, it was a PT government) won an appeal, and since then our wage increase has been suspended.
In 2000-2001, we had a single contract anticipating an increase of 10%. This year, we are demanding 12.43%. We had to strike, and the government called the police. How can this be understood coming from a government that proclaimed everywhere that it practiced "participatory democracy" and that it represented the workers? We did not yield. The strike ended with a small victory. We didn't get a salary readjustment, but we obtained the renewal of our collective bargaining agreement, a substantial increase in meal tickets -- which reach up to 30% of the salary of some workers - and a guarantee of the maintenance of our retirement fund, which the government had let sink.
One thing is clear: Nothing is ever won without struggle.
Using this whole framework of "participatory democracy," the government never stopped telling us that the company is in a difficult situation and that our demands would not help them get out of it. And they kept insisting there was no money to help resolve the situation.
But, at the same time, the government granted a loan of R$200 million to a private group, Trevo, which produces fertilizers and owns silos and warehouses. If one considers that the total wage packet paid at Cesa is roughly R$500,000, the increase we were demanding would not have come to R$750,000. This is exactly 260 times less than the loan the government granted to Trevo. What is "democratic" and "participatory" in all of this?
********************
3) The Record of 13 Years of Participatory Budget in Porto Alegre
The O Trabalho Current of the Workers Party (PT) produced a brochure in which it provides a concrete balance sheet of the 13-year experience of the Participatory Budget in Porto Alegre.
The brochure's introduction explains O Trabalho's overall stance on the question of the Participatory Budget:
"O Trabalho fights and has always fought for the independence of the working class, independence which takes concrete forms in its organization of parties, trade unions and independent organizations. This is why we believe that it is our duty to draw the attention of workers, activists and labor organizations to the mortal danger which the Participatory Budget represents for their rights, for the free exercise of their right to demand, for democracy, and for the very existence of workers' and people's organizations."
The brochure goes on to describe the results of the Porto Alegre Participatory Budget:
1. The Union of Neighborhood Associations (UAMPA), traditional organization which regroups neighborhood associations from Porto Alegre, is today on its last legs and was not able to hold its recent congress.
Pedro Lopes, a longtime leader of UAMPA, told O Trabalho newspaper:
"UAMPA originated as a fighting organization. We were in the front ranks of the struggles for education, housing and transportation - against austerity. We fought the privatization of the public bus system.
"Then UAMPA gradually became absorbed into the governance of austerity through the Participarty Budget. We never questioned it. We even got funding for xeroxes in City Hall, a nice office space - some of which can be considered conquests, others of which were simply co-optation.
"Now, we can't even organize our own congress. We have been gradually absorbed by the forums of the Participatory Budget." (O Trabalho, May 9-23, 2001)
2. The Municipal Workers Trade Union (SIMPA) finds itself today having to compromise its positions by "arbitrating" between the demands of its union members and the demands of other organizations, in order to respect the consensus that dictates the Participatory Budget.
Echoing this frustration, Jorge Buchabqui, former Human Resources Secretary of Rio Grande do Sul state government, resigned from his post in protest of the state government's pro-IMF policies and the fraudulent character of the Participatory Budget" - which, he said, had become a "straitjacket in the hands of the government to contain all the demands of the workers." (O Trabalho, January 15-29, 2001)
3. The Participatory Budget talks a lot about democracy, but little is known about how the Participatory Budget Councilors, who ultimately make the policy decisions, are designated. In the "Bylaws: General, technical and regional criteria" edited by the municipal government in 2000, it is stated that to be elected councilor, representation is established proportionally according to the following table when there is more than one contending list:
- 24.9% of votes or less: no elected delegates; - from 25% to 37.5% of votes: one associate; - from 37.6% to 44.9% of votes: two associates; - from 45% to 55% of votes: 1 seat and 1 associate.
Fine example of democracy! A slate can receive up to 25% of the vote and yet not get a single delegate. This is how "consensus" is established - by marginalizing all opposition.
4. The global Porto Alegre municipal budget shows that from 1991 to 2000, the municipality increased its tax revenues by 350%. During this same period, however, the municipality's internal and foreign debt payments (charges and depreciation) increased six-fold.
5. The Municipal Budget is subjected to a number of federal provisions that highly restrict its share of federal tax revenue. This is the case of the Kandir Law, which subtracts a part of tax revenue that should go to municipalities and channels it toward export subsidies for employers.
Another such provision is the Federal Union Revenues (DRU), which authorizes the federal government not to transfer to the municipalities all the resources received by the federal treasury. Hence, the Porto Alegre municipality implements the Participatory Budget with a budget already amputated by 38 million Reals by the federal Cardoso government.
Thirty-eight million Reals are the equivalent of 1,520 housing units (UHS) or 317 kilometers of sewer construction, the lack of which is a nightmare for the populations of lower-income neighborhoods having to bear repetitive and devastating overflows.
6. Outsourcing: These are the funds funneled through the World Bank and IMF for the purpose of sub-contracting and outsourcing public sector jobs. Indeed, the Participatory Budget functions as an instrument to generalize the outsourcing of public services. The "2001 Investment and Services Plan" synthesized the "priorities" defined by the Participatory Budget, stating:
"In the area of social assistance, there will be a 'transfer of resources to Non-Governmental Organizations which will develop these activities, with contracts with 54 organizations to carry out 4,200 projects.' (Bureau of Vocational Work: Agreements with Non-Governmental Organizations)
If you simply take the year 2000 budget, transfers out of the municipal budget toward private institutions amounted to the following:
o 6.34 million Reals in education, which represent 150% of the total investments of the municipality for the year in public municipal schools;
o 5.26 million Reals in healthcare, which represents twice the total investment of the municipality in public healthcare;
[Note: Garbage collection has been totally outsourced and privatized.]
o Through the mechanism of these agreements, the PSF (Family Health Plan) has transferred to private neighborhood health associations the hiring of doctors and nurses - a task that was previously carried out by municipal health administrators;
o The management and administration of the Community Daycare Centers has been transferred to neighborhood associations; these do not have any municipal daycare personnel or infrastructure.
7. The Porto Alegre municipality has agreed to compel the local population and the municipality to accept growing proportions of the healthcare expenses abandoned by the federal government.
>From 1998 to 2000, the State transfers to the municipality for
>healthcare expenses (SUS) dropped from 358.81 million Reals to
>299.54 million Reals. At the same time, however, healthcare
>expenditures increased to 415.53 million Reals. Hence, for the
>single year 2000, 115 million Reals were taken out of the municipal
>budget. With this sum, 4,560 housing units or 953 kilometers of
>sewer system could have been built.
8. While the Camata Law - and now the Law of Fiscal Responsibility - require the municipalities and State governments to limit to 60% of their liquidities the global value of wages and retirement of municipal public employees, the Porto Alegre town hall, which implements the Participatory Budget, proudly claims to have applied the "most rigorous criteria," limiting to 48% the pay slips of those working and retired from the Porto Alegre municipal civil service.
This difference of 12% would increase demand and create jobs. Instead, the municipal funds have been paid out for outsourcing - and hence the NGO-ization - of the public health services, education and social assistance.
These are the facts.
Contrary to what is publicly claimed by all-too-many people, the Participatory Budget is not an "innovative form of democracy." Rather, it is a major instrument of corporatist policy whose aim is to integrate and destroy independent labor and popular organizations in order to implement the measures demanded by international finance capital: debt payment, reduction of public expenses, sub-contracting/outsourcing, and privatization.