Brazil’s Truck drivers meet in Brasilia to discuss a single agenda

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Entities that represent truck drivers will meet this Saturday, 18th, in Brasilia, in a national meeting called “In search of unification of struggles and survival of the category”.

According to the leaders who are organizing the event, the objective will be to debate a single plan for the road carriers, including independent and contracted carriers.

The meeting will put on the table entities that frequently diverge in calling for strikes, such as the Brazilian Association of Automotive Vehicle Drivers (Abrava) and the National Council of Road Cargo Transportation (CNTRC), which, together with the National Confederation of Transport and Logistics Workers (CNTTL), are promoting the meeting.

After the meeting, the agreed plan should be presented to the federal government through the Ministry of Infrastructure.

CNTRC’s president, Plínio Dias, says that representatives and leaders from more than 13 states are expected to attend.

On the other hand, leaderships linked to the truckers’ movement who held events that favor the Bolsonaro government and are against the Supreme Court, were not invited to the meeting. “They don’t speak on behalf of the category. It was just politicking,” stated Dias.

“First, we will talk and then define the directions of how each of the points on the agenda will be achieved,” pointed out CNTTL’s director, Carlos Alberto Litti Dahmer.

He says that the idea is to plan the steps to collect promises made to the teamsters, but not yet kept, and even some achievements, such as the freight tariff, which, although it exists, is not followed by some companies and its constitutionality still depends on a decision of the Supreme Court (STF).

Thus, in the meeting’s agenda are issues such as the compliance with the minimum floor of road freight, the defense of the floor’s constitutionality, the high price of diesel, Petrobras’ fuel price policy, transit voting, the regulatory mark of road freight transport, unique retirement with 25 years of work and the impacts of BR do Mar on road transport.

“The idea is to draw up a single plan for the self-employed, organized together. Here is a need for this union”, said the president of Abrava, Wallace Landim, known as Chorão.

The possibility of going on a national strike is not discarded, but it is not mentioned as a first-order issue by the representatives. However, some say that organizational forms for an eventual strike tend to be discussed. Others point out that the meeting will also identify if there would be national adhesion for an eventual movement.

The meeting is also seen as an attempt by the self-employed to overcome splits and cracks in the truck workers that emerged after the 2018 strike.

There are also disagreements about the alignment of some entities with the Bolsonaro administration and the distancing of others from the government. The meeting is the first of national scope since the interruption of activities by the self-employed that year.

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