Practice of workers' action and organizing forms at Lisnave

Abstract

This text belongs to a larger work (which will give place to the publication of other articles in Análise Social; about the social conflict at Lisnave, the greatest working-class concentration within the main industrial belt in Portugal: Lisbon's one. That work, which is collective, comprises the period from April 1974 up to July 1975 and includes: a) a description of the principal economic, financial and social aspects in that enterprise; b) an analysis of the workers' claiming issues and of their articulation with the novement developed in Lisbon's industrial belt; c) an analysis of the practice of action and of the workers' organizing forms. The text here published includes only a part from this last analysis, only comprising the period between April and August 1974 (i.e., the strike in May in that year and the period post-strike inmediately after). The author examines, on one side, how relations among the workers in their whole had been structured and organized and, on the other side, the type of opposition developed and materialized in the relationship between workers and their adversary, the employers. In a first part, entitled «Between rupture and négociation: the strike in May 1974», one successively analyses the state of conflict at Lisnave before the 25^th April 1974, the burst of the striking movement and the development and end of the strike. In a second part - «Lisnave after the strike: the organization into committees and the institutionalization of the conflict» - one deals with such issues as the behaviour of the employers, the organization and the directions of the workers' group and the directions of the group of managers.