A justiça do trabalho e os trabalhadores da Amazônia Ocidental: uma instituição em disputa (1941-1981)

Abstract

This thesis examines the process of expansion and consolidation of the Labor Court (Justiça do Trabalho) in the Western Amazon between 1941 and 1981, emphasizing the role of workers as key agents in the development of this institution in the region. It argues that the presence and strengthening of the Labor Court cannot be understood solely as the result of state initiatives, but rather as the outcome of social disputes in which workers mobilized the legal field as a space for claiming rights. The research is grounded in the field of labor social history, engaging with the contributions of E. P. Thompson, particularly in understanding law as a field of dispute, and Pierre Bourdieu, in conceiving law as an expression of symbolic power. Methodologically, the study draws on a diverse set of sources, including hearing records from the 1st Labor Conciliation and Judgment Board of Manaus (1947), collective labor disputes from 1964, institutional reports, administrative documents, and newspapers, collected from the General Archive of the 8th Regional Labor Court (TRT8) and the Memory Center of the 11th Regional Labor Court (TRT11). The analysis demonstrates that, from the 1940s to the 1980s, the Labor Court in the Amazon functioned simultaneously as an instrument of state regulation and as an arena of social dispute, progressively appropriated by workers as part of their strategies of struggle. In this process, the intensification of judicial demands, combined with the economic and political transformations of the region, contributed to the expansion of the institutional structure of the Labor Court, culminating in the creation of the 11th Regional Labor Court in 1981. It is concluded that the consolidation of this institution in the Western Amazon was directly linked to workers’ agency, whose presence in the courts not only legitimized its existence but also redefined, in practice, the social meanings of labor justice in Brazil.