Privatização do setor elétrico brasileiro: impactos sobre o trabalho

Abstract

With the privatization of the large companies composing the Brazilian electrical system during the 1990´s, a radical change in the sector occurred, one that was based on a new conception of electrical energy. The view that considered energy a social good, one supposedly present in the public service cooperative, passed to that which transformed energy into merchandize, dependent on the oscillations of supply and demand and driven by the vision of profit. Beginning in 2002, new modifications are introduced in the electrical sector, seeking to resolve the failure of the privatization process that counted on auto-regulation of the sector by the market and which had culminated in the national crisis of the “blackout” the year before. These measurements, which sought to gradually make viable a mixed system, based on State and private participation, received new force with Lula’s government, culminating a process of transformations since the 1990´s and generating significant impacts on labor in the sector.