Founding of the Workers' Party

The Founding of the Workers' Party transformed Brazil’s labor resurgence into a broad political coalition. Emerging from the strikes that spread across the country in 1978, the party sought to unite wage earners and poorer Brazilians with opposition politicians, intellectuals, students, and social movements. In the book’s account, this grassroots organization helped make the transition from military rule to democracy more inclusive, linking workplace mobilization to political change at the national level.

From factory strikes to a political opening

The Scania factory strike began a wave of Brazilian labor action. The disputes concerned wages, but Lula later emphasized that the economic and political dimensions could not be separated: workers struggling for better pay also won a political victory. The revival of organized labor was part of a wider reaction to fifteen years of military rule, as groups across society began to oppose the regime.

In 1973, Fernando Henrique Cardoso argued that democracy in Brazil would be created by bringing together the many social groups opposed to military rule. He called for the reactivation of civil society through professional associations, trade unions, churches, student organizations, study groups, debating circles, and social movements. The account presents the Scania strike as a moment that helped give this wider possibility a concrete organizational direction.

Building a cross-sector party

By late 1978, Lula was proposing a new political party. It was not to represent trade unionists alone: he insisted it should speak for all wage earners and the poor more generally. This ambition connected union leaders’ efforts to organize a political platform with social movements that had begun forming across Brazil during the 1970s.

On August 18, 1979, a meeting in São Paulo brought together former opposition politicians, union leaders, students, intellectuals, and representatives of one hundred diverse social movements to discuss forming the party. It was launched that October at the São Judas Tadeo restaurant in São Bernardo. The founding thus joined groups with different organizational roots in a common political project, rather than treating the labor movement as the party’s sole constituency.

Grassroots organization and democratic change

The party’s coalition-building continued as its leaders and supporters connected with local social movements across the country. As the Workers' Party took over local governments, it encouraged civic participation and contributed to changes in governance. The book distinguishes this process from a sudden, single revolutionary break: political transformation proceeded through grassroots empowerment that began in workplaces and widened into local and national politics.

That organization mattered to the form of Brazil’s transition. The movement translated factory-based empowerment into national political change, including the transition from military rule to democracy. Grassroots participation also helped ensure that democratization was accompanied by movement toward more inclusive political institutions and a government committed to public services, educational expansion, and a more level playing field.

Significance and contrast

The Workers' Party’s founding illustrates the book’s broader argument that inclusive institutions arise through political conflict and organized participation, not automatically. A critical juncture can weaken established elites and strengthen their opponents, but its outcome is uncertain; the subsequent work of building a coalition helps determine whether empowerment broadens political participation and endures.

The comparison with Venezuela clarifies the distinction. Venezuela also transitioned to democracy, but without comparable grassroots empowerment, and its politics remained shaped by corruption, patronage, and conflict. Brazil’s broad coalition, by contrast, helped connect democratization to a more pluralistic distribution of political power. The party’s significance in this account lies not only in its formation as a new organization, but in how it gathered disparate social groups into a durable force for institutional change.