White Coats with Blue Collars: Doctors’ Labor Protests and the Struggle for Democracy in Brazil, 1978–1982

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the labor struggles of doctors in late 1970s and early 1980s Brazil, the final years of the nation's dictatorship. Health workers' protests for better salaries and working conditions were extensive and reflected a dramatic change in the way medical practitioners in Brazil perceived their professional and political identities. Fusing together histories of medicine and labor, the article shows how physicians not only led strikes and unionized by their tens of thousands but also collaborated with blue-collar sectors in a larger struggle for working rights, access to healthcare, and structural reforms. Dictatorship officials, the article reveals, were significantly concerned by hospital strikes and particularly by the emerging cross-sector alliance. In this sense, the doctors' movement played a significant role in challenging Brazil's military rule and advancing the nation's transition to democracy.