WORLD WORLDWIDE BRASIL BRAZIL SOUTH AMERICA - news journal UPDATE - (en) Brazil, OSL: Attacks on the rights of public servants in Maricá-RJ (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Civil servants in Maricá-RJ and the general population suffered a major

attack at the beginning of 2025. In the silence of the parliamentary
recess and the education holidays, Mayor Washington Quaquá (PT), in
violation of the civil servant statute and the Organic Law of the
Municipality, announced the cut in the food allowance for the city's
public servants. In an extraordinary session held on the morning of
Thursday (23/01), Quaquá's government base voted in favor of "new rules"
for the food allowance based on a salary cap, which in practice excludes
most of the civil servant category. The cut will also affect a large
part of the city's small businesses, given that they were paid with a
local currency (Mumbuca), which is widely used by public servants for
their food. This measure could contribute to the collapse of countless
small businesses, maintained by informal and precarious workers.

In addition to this measure, council members from Quaquá's allied base
voted in favor of closing down the Maricá State Health Foundation
(FEMAR), which had recently held a public selection process with
hundreds of successful candidates who fear for their jobs. Those who
passed the last municipal education selection process and the Maricá
Institute of Science and Technology (ICTIM) are also awaiting their
appointments, which have not yet been held. It is worth remembering that
in December 2024, Maricá council members increased their own salaries
from R$12,661.12 to R$16,503.19.

The civil service category joined other workers in the city in a
demonstration in front of the city council, such as the beneficiaries of
the Worker Protection Program (PPT), mostly informal workers who had
their benefits cut in recent months. Various groups and organizations
from the city were present, such as the Union of Education Professionals
of the Municipality of Maricá (SINEDUC), which represents municipal
education workers, the Maricá branch of the State Union of Education
Professionals of the State of Rio de Janeiro (SEPE - Maricá), the
Collective of Municipal Educators of Maricá, etc. The Union of Public
Servants of Maricá (SINDISERV) was not present, despite having met with
the mayor a few days ago. Public servants from Maricá should demand that
an immediate assembly be called to organize the struggle of Maricá's
civil servants in defense of their rights.

Received with brutality, the participants in the demonstration were
prevented from accessing the chamber to follow the vote on the project.
The Military Police and the Municipal Guard surrounded the protesters in
the inner courtyard of the chamber, preventing access to the bathroom
and water for hours. An action that would make any frankly right-wing
government proud. Even with the violence at the City Council, the
demonstration continued, and the workers continued to pressure the end
of the vote, while the council members from Quaquá's allied base (PT,
PCdoB, PV, PDT, PSD, AVANTE, PSDB, CIDADANIA) voted against the attacks
on rights and hid inside the council building.

These attacks also leave some of the workers in Maricá politically
confused, given that these parties claim to defend the workers' demands,
but in practice, they betray them with shady deals and the removal of
rights. As this government applies part of the neoliberal recipe of
cutting workers' rights, it is handing over some of these workers on a
silver platter to the far-right Bolsonaro supporters in the city, who
under NO circumstances can be an ally in our fight to defend rights,
because if they were in government, they would do something even worse.

The mayor's justification is that such cuts are necessary for the city's
"development" and to break away from "dependence on oil royalties," but
the food allowance represents less than 0.5% of Maricá's budget. In
practice, the city government of Maricá is cutting workers' rights to
fatten the budgets of the large construction companies that will be
responsible for the pharaonic projects announced by the mayor. In recent
interviews and without any public debate, the mayor announced plans for
"Gondolas" for navigation on the Mumbuca River, the construction of
seven more works by Oscar Niemeyer[1], the construction of a "medieval"
castle and a steam locomotive[2]in the city, etc.

The city of Maricá is the city with the highest oil royalties in the
country. In 2024, the city received 2.69 billion in royalties and has an
estimated budget of 7 billion and 61 million reais for 2025. A huge
budget in a city where in 2022, only 98.82% of the population did not
have access to basic sanitation and 42% of the population did not have
access to running water! This situation has not changed structurally to
this day after 3 PT mandates).

All these attacks demonstrate that civil servants and workers in Maricá
need to be alert, organized and mobilized in the face of a possible wave
of cuts to rights. It is worth noting that the PT is part of the
government of Eduardo Paes (a government that has attacked several
rights of teachers and other civil servants) and has an alliance that
goes beyond electoral pragmatism.

The existence of social programs such as Bolsa-Mumbuca (a basic income
program), which must be expanded, and the Zero Tariff (which must be
improved and maintained) cannot make us forget the profound social and
economic contradictions in the city of Maricá. 58.7% of civil servants
in Maricá are temporary workers[3], with precarious contracts and
salaries, just as within public education, inspectors, doormen,
mediators and school cooks work for outsourced companies that
overexploit the category, delaying salaries and violating labor rights.
In healthcare, we have a strong presence of Social Health Organizations
(OSS), both in the Primary Health Care Network and in the Che Guevara
Hospital. OSSs are a neoliberal way of emptying the social content of
public services and fattening the private sector.

We need to break with the illusion that the election of a "progressive"
government or of council members supposedly aligned with workers' rights
automatically guarantees the achievement and establishment of rights. We
see that in Maricá, the "city of utopias", the social-liberal PT
government is not in its fourth term, with a large majority in the
chamber and record approval ratings, and continues to apply a "lighter"
version of the liberal fiscal adjustment in its social-liberal version.

It is only with the working class permanently organized and mobilized,
organized in union spaces, popular movements and specific and general
forums of struggle, that we can stop the attacks on our rights. We need
to build strong unity among the city's public servants, both formal and
informal workers, through a common space for struggle and organization
that will make the government back down from its attacks.

Libertarian Socialist Organization (OSL)

January 2025.

[1]https://maricainfo.com/2025/01/08/quaqua-enquanto-niteroi-tem-um-caminho-nos-temos-a-cidade-inteira-do-oscar-niemeyer.html

[2]https://maricainfo.com/2024/10/15/quaqua-pt-anuncia-intencao-de-construir-castelo-medieval-no-espraiado-junto-com-trem-maria-fumaca.html

[3]https://maricainfo.com/2024/08/16/quase-60-dos-funcionarios-da-prefeitura-de-marica-sao-tempor

https://socialismolibertario.net/2025/01/24/os-ataques-aos-direitos-dos-servidores-publicos-em-marica-rj/
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