The anti-union platform of big techs: the case of Mercado Libre in Brazil

Abstract

We present the process of a political conflict period, from 2022 to 2025, involving the Mercado Libre company in Brazil and information technology (IT) workers, a category juridically split off in 2019 through a new corporate entity called Meli Developers, legally configuring it as a distinct economic activity from the one it had previously. In this process of fragmentation of the workforce and contractual regimes by Mercado Livre, the union structure is activated in the dispute between unions for the representation of the “new” base. The same union structure is, on the other hand, strategically orchestrated in institutional changes by the company, allied with ideological practices and suppression of collective mobilization, aiming to supress union activity within the company. Competition at the base union level and corporate strategies to bypass labor rights are perceived and resisted by the rank and file, spurring the formation of an unofficial worker group, the Meli Workers, which begins to mobilize the union activity of the category. In this presentation we describe: anti-union strategies and tactics, convergences and divergences between neoliberalism and unionism, objective and subjective elements that constrain or stimulate the path toward union activity. We conclude that, in the case analyzed, subjective elements about labor activity and corporate policy become relevant in approaching union activity, and are thus articulated both to constrain and to propel collective organization.