Operárias negras: lutas e controle patronal na Cia. de Charutos Dannemann e na Costa Penna & Cia. (1910-1950)

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to investigate the evidence of a system of organization of work activities in cigar and cigarillo companies, where I sought to analyze the interactions, resistance and struggles of tobacco workers against a production model installed in Recôncavo da Bahia, since the start of the development from the tobacco complex from 1910 to 1950. The companies studied in this papaer are Cia. de Charutos Dannemann and Costa Penna & Cia, both located in the cities of São Félix and Muritiba. These companies had outstanding trajectories in the tobacco products market in Brazil, with Cia de Charutos Dannemann being the most prominent in the field at that time. The work of black women was the central axis of the development of the tobacco industry based on the appropriation ofworker’s knowledge and work in preparation of cigars and cigarillos. I tried to precisely analyze the work processes and how they were systematically reduced and fractionated in the manufactures with a view of production increasing and control of the work force. This model of work organization translated expressions of racialization of female workers and subalternized places of gender, indicative of employers’ strategies to reproduce social oppression in technologies of domination and work control to expand the appropriation of surplus value. This process demonstrated a division between conception and execution of work as fundamental elements for the formation of a bureaucratic apparatus of production responsible for the management and control of work processes. In this way, the workers were not inert in the face of this production model and developed several strategies to fight against exploitation and launched advances towards the control of work processes. The working class ‘struggles were investigated from the implicit and latent struggles of the factory floor to the open struggles of strikes, stoppages and workers’ movements.