Résumé
Gerdau Açominas, a steel company located in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, is one of the largest employees in the region, with over 5000 employees. Founded by the federal government in the late 1970s, the company was privatized in the 1990s. A large workforce relating to mining and steel production exists, though there have been cycles of both job additions and mass layoffs. The Metalworkers Union declared itself as a “partner” of the company, and striving for “social peace.” Given the atmosphere of permanent crisis where the threat of unemployment is constant, this study examines the possible forms of worker resistance. Workers developed individual strategies to keep their jobs and retain their standard of living. These actions have ranged from sabotage to legal proceedings; when practiced at the same time by a multitude of fragmented actors, these strategies appear as a form of diffuse resistance. Opposition between labor and employers is not eliminated, but the balance of power is reconfigured—while remaining unequal.This ethnographic survey reviews one hundred decisions of the Labor Tribunal in lawsuits brought by workers against Gerdau Açominas, bringing to light latent work conflicts which do not always involve open confrontation or collective mobilization.