“Na vanguarda do seguro social brasileiro”: estiva, previdência e cidadania nas décadas de 1930 e 1940 (Rio de Janeiro)

Abstract

This paper aims at understanding the dynamics established in the context, to what extent the experiences of dockworkers contributed to the acceptance of public policies related to the social security issue in Brazil in the 1930s and 1940s, Tracing as analysis of this process the years of operation of Institute of Retirement and Pensions of Stowage (IAPE), from its inception in 1938 until its incorporation to the Institute of Retirement and Pensions of Employees in Transport and Cargo (Iapetec) in 1945. The IAPE was considered by the State and the press as the "vanguard of Brazilian social security," sought to play the role of assistance in the labor context and aimed to be one of the catalysts of the corporatist project employed by the State in the 1930s and 1940s. However, in less than a decade had consummated its incorporation to Iapetec, after failing technical reforms. Nevertheless, the IAPE was an important tool for the use of Dockers to alleviate problems of their daily lives, of which we can highlight: insurance against sickness and accidents at work and birth assistance; Medium-surgical-hospital care. Absorbing some of the most urgent demands of these workers and their families. Nevertheless, we emphasize that the use of these public policies was also made possible by the strategic position in which the category was articulated in the midst of the national economic scenario, provoking an aspect of struggle for a workers' citizenship. Thus, we observe a confluence between interests of the Brazilian State in the proposed cut and the interests of dockworkers in the Federal Capital, revealing contradictions and more interpretations about the different conceptions of class. In order to do this, it was necessary to analyze the daily life of the workers in their work environments and places of sociability (sometimes both focus on the same space), to understand both the internal conflicts in which they were inserted and the variables that made them compose their class entity, the Union of Dock Workers. From this point on, we present different sources (interviews, periodicals, official documentation and minutes of the IAPE fiscal council), as the Brazilian State sought to undertake its social security policy and have to incorporate the demands of these workers.