This article tries to answer the following question: where did the labor unions go? For such, we analyze the two main union centers: the Workers Union Center (CUT) and the Union Force (FS), regarding their ideals and the unionized actions. Our main hypothesis is that contemporary Brazilian unions, called new unionism, went through big transformations over more than three decades. These transformations significantly altered their practices and union concepts. This is especially apparent in its most important center, the CUT, a direct result of the new unionism, which distanced itself in actions from the so-called combative unionism, which clearly has a classist take, towards union actions that are more negotiating and aim to broaden citizenship spaces. To perform this analysis, our research focused on the main resolutions from Congress, assemblies, documents, and on studies that analyzed union practices over the last decades.
Union practices; Union centers; New unionism; Negotiating unionism; CUT; Union Force