Journalist profession: the strike at Barbalho family companies that changed journalism in Pará

CMIO 13 de May de 2016

7 minutes read

September 2013 marked the history of journalism in Pará. A group of professionals carried out the biggest ever strike against low wages and excessive working hours. That movement managed to paralyze the newsrooms of the newspaper Pará diary and Online Diary, companies belonging to the Rede Brasil Amazônia (RBA) Communication group, owned by Senator Jader Barbalho (PMDB-PA). The group also owns the RBA TV (an affiliate of Bandeirantes) and the local TV Record.

Barbalho is one of the most influential politicians in the North of the country, but also the target of investigations in several scandals of embezzlement of public resources such as Sudam. He was recently mentioned in the investigations of Operation Lava Jato, which investigates the scheme for paying bribes to politicians with resources from Petrobras.

The RBA journalists’ strike lasted from September 20 to 28, 2013. They won the Collective Bargaining Agreement in Justice, which ensured an increase in the minimum wage from R$1,000 to R$1,300.00. In the Collective Convention, in 2014, the floor for journalists of Diário do Pará increased to R$ 1,500.00.

The president of the Union of Journalists of Pará (Sindjor-PA), Roberta Vilanova, says that these professionals were not afraid to fight for better wages and working conditions, but, according to her, there were retaliations on the part of Jader Barbalho’s RBA: 16 journalists were laid off as of November 2014. The layoffs took place 45 days after the term of the stability agreement, which did not allow cuts for professionals who participated in the strike, expired.

The protests of journalists in the streets of Belém (Photo: Sindjor-PA)

“The worker has the right to strike and the company also has the right to fire whoever it wants and whenever it wants. However, in the case of Pará diaryit became clear to the union that all the layoffs occurred as retaliation for participating in the 2013 strike because there are indications”, says the unionist, highlighting:

“No one is fired at the company’s door when they arrive to work as happened in the Pará diary. For this reason, there are some lawsuits being processed in the Labor Court asking for the reinstatement of those dismissed and compensation for moral damages”, adds Roberta Vilanova.

Also in 2015, the union recorded mass layoffs, the birds, in the newsrooms of the newspaper The Liberal and Liberal Network (an affiliate of Rede Globo), companies managed by Organizações Rômulo Maiorana (ORM), belonging to another influential family in the region, the Maioranas.

“In the case of the ORM, the union denounced it as mass dismissal to the Public Ministry of Labor (MPT), but the institution did not consider it as such. But we have many lawsuits against the MROs, including for moral damages”, said Roberta Vilanova. “There were 45 dismissals of journalists, the ORM emptied the newsrooms of the newspaper The Liberalgives Liberal TV and the ORM portal”, he says.

President of the Union of Journalists of Pará, Roberta Vilanova (Photo: Sindjor-PA)

Regarding salaries, in 2015 Sindjor made a salary agreement with the ORM, which increased the salary from R$ 1,900.00 to R$ 2,178 in replacement, but the companies delay the payment of vacations, the transfer of union monthly fees and the contractual terminations. At G1 Pará (a news site belonging to the Liberal Network), for example, employees are without the FGTS transfer. “Which is absurd, since, in addition to dismissing the journalist without just cause, it still delays this payment and the release of the FGTS, causing serious social damage”, says the president of Sindjor-PA, Roberta Vilanova.

According to survey of Real Amazon with the General Register of Employed and Unemployed (Caged), of the Ministry of Labor [com o novo governo do presidente interino de Michel Temer a Previdência Social foi para a pasta da Fazenda], between 2013 and 2015, 457 journalists were fired from newsrooms in Pará. During this period, the number of professionals hired stood at 486, which means that there was turnover and a positive balance of 29 open positions. See below:

infographic-ministry-of-labor-for

Caged does not report the names of the companies that fired the journalists, despite preparing the statistics based on data from the Annual Social Information Report (Rais), which is an instrument for collecting data on labor activity from the National Registry of Persons. (CNPJ) and the Consolidation of Labor Laws (CLT).

Therefore, it is only possible to check the mass layoffs per company by the union statistics, which approves contractual terminations for employees with more than one year of formal contract. Sindjor-PA made available to the Real Amazon only data from the year 2015, in which it recorded a total of 79 dismissals. The table shows the 16 cuts in the RBA, and 45 in the companies of the Romulo Maiorana Organizations. See below:

infographic-for-2

Since April 2015, when the first group of journalists from the ORM was fired, the union’s directors say they are trying to talk to the company. “The problem is that the intransigent stance prevents direct debate with the Maiorana family. All meetings were held, at most, with representatives of the Human Resources Department or legal counsel. Dialogue remains very difficult, the group does not dialogue with its workers, who could even help decide the best way for the group to get out of the crisis it claims to be facing”, says Roberta Vilanova.

What do companies say?

Sought by the report, the manager of Human Resources of Rede Brasil Amazônia (RBA) Cléia Mende said that the Union of Journalists of Pará had to prove that the 16 dismissals in the newspaper Diário do Pará and in the Diário Online were retaliation. “It’s not true, you have to prove it, my daughter. This issue of layoffs in newspapers is happening all over Brazil. We are experiencing an economic crisis in the country, not knowing what will happen. We have to believe in God,” she says.

The head of Human Resources at the Romulo Maiorana Organizations, Vera Vizeu de Amorim, says she is unaware of mass layoffs of journalists in companies: newspaper The Liberalsite G1 Paráand on the broadcaster Liberal TV. “Nothere is no justification, there was no dismissal of 45 journalists. During a period of four to five years we carried out a restructuring in all sectors of the company, where we reduced functions in the commercial, administrative and even drivers areas”, he says.

Regarding delays in the payment of journalists’ salaries, including the FGTS benefit, as Sindjor-PA denounces, Vera Amorim also said that she was unaware of the fact. “As far as I know, everything is normal. [os pagamentos dos salários]. We are walking without planning layoffs”, he says.

breaking the silence

The empty newsroom during the strike at Diário do Pará (Photo: Sindjor-PA)

Supporting the 2013 strike movement changed the reality of many Pará journalists. But few, to this day, venture to talk about what happened that week of September 20-26. FR – who prefers not to be identified – is 37 years old, 11 of them working as a professional journalist. A graduate of the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), she resigned due to the conditions to which she was subjected after having supported the strike movement in the newspaper Pará diary. Currently, she makes a living from freelance work, dedicates herself to studying for public contests and relies on her mother’s financial help.

The journalist had eight years of RBA and some benefits, such as, for example, sending articles written at home and not having to punch the clock. Like her, other longtime professionals in the group had the same privilege.

”They started to charge me to fulfill the workload. That would be right, if it were demanded of everyone, but those who did not support the strike did not have this demand”, recalls FR

In addition to the time requirement, she also says that she was changed editors, and that because of accumulating another job – like most journalists in Pará – she was not always able to guarantee punctuality. Thus, she started to arrive at the newsroom in the late afternoon and remained working until 10 pm.

“At that time, my daughter, who was one year old and was still being breastfed, got sick. Even though I warned that I was going through this situation, when I returned to work I took the certificate to Human Resources and discovered that I had been told to miss it. The staff accepted the certificate, but I decided that my daughter was more important. I let a few days go by and resigned,” she says.

By taking the action, the journalist did not have much to receive, and what she got was paid for with the support of the Journalists’ Union. Currently, she does not think about returning to the newsroom, even declaring that she “loves being a reporter”.

”Low wages and bad working conditions kept me away from reporting. I tried to advise, but in private companies it is necessary to spend the whole day, contrary to the legislation that says that the journalist’s journey is five hours a day. There are companies that charge 44 hours a week, that is, many journalists work nine hours a day for five days a week, not working on weekends. But this is elusive because sometimes you have to produce notes on weekends too,” says F.

Thus, the public sector has become the most viable option within what it seeks today. “It doesn’t even matter if it’s going to be in my area, I just want a salary that pays my bills and I have time for the people I love,” she says.

Regarding the layoffs, she sees everything just as a message to stay away from the market, which, in her words, “discards” good professionals. ”Our journalism is deeply marked by partisan politics. With each election, interests change and scenarios are reconfigured. Result: there are good professionals who have established themselves only with their work and there are many mediocre ones who have established themselves and even gained notoriety by serving the commercial interests of the company and the personnel of the board. When talking more precisely about the press, we know that there is a game and there are rules; some professionals pay the price, others don’t. I left the table, who knows, maybe one day I’ll come back if the rules, scenarios and/or players change”, evaluates the professional.