Taking the labor and conflicts point of view, this article discusses the emergence of a new agenda for development in Brazil. Its focus is the construction worker protests and strikes at two of the Suape Port Industrial Complex's main sites, the Abreu e Lima Refinery and the Suape Petrochemical Plant, in 2011 and 2012. Through the use of this approach we intend to comprehend the processes touched off by the conflicts, mediations, and negotiations, as well as what has been at stake with workers' demands and also union, management and government discourse and practices. We ask ourselves if these mobilizations, besides giving them immediate gains, have given workers recognition as legitimate agents of social demands. We also ask to what degree such demands have become not only a target of public outcry but also a way of problematizing the terms that give sustenance to the new development discourse.
Development; Labor; Unionism; Civil construction; Suape
