• 2 Moore, Barrington, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Boston, Beacon Press.Moore, 1967, (...)

1The political-military movement which ended the oligarchical-liberal regime in 1930 started a process of conservative modernization, in the terms proposed by Barrington Moore. According to him, one of the historical paths to transform traditional societies into modern ones is through an accelerated industrialization made feasible by a ‘revolution from above.’ In countries such as Germany or Japan conservative modernization was led by dissident elements of the old dominant class, the majority coming from the countryside, and by a relatively fragile industrial and commercial bourgeoisie. In this type of modernization, a fundamental factor was the existence of a coalition between the rural aristocracy and the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie2.

• 3 Ibid., p. XV-XVI, 436-441
• 4 Coutinho, Carlos Nelson, Gramsci: um estudo sobre seu pensamento político, Rio de Janeiro, Campus, (...)

2Brazil moved towards industrial capitalism along the path of conservative modernization under the leadership of the state established in 1930. Led by parts of the rural oligarchies concerned with production for the internal market and urban sectors (industrial, professionals, and the military), the new state guaranteed the three conditions mentioned by Moore for the success of the ‘revolution from above’3. With the assistance of a centralized and expanded state apparatus, it contained both the opposition sectors in the dominant classes and leftwing organizations and the most combative workers’ movements. Equally, the post-1930 state presented a significant margin of autonomy4.

• 5 Diniz, Eli, “Estado Novo. Estrutura de poder. Relações de classe”, in Boris Fausto (dir.), Históri (...)

3This autonomy benefited from the incapacity of any fraction of the dominant classes to exercise hegemony, as well as the need to incorporate the middle class and the urban working class to give the regime reasonable stability. The working class was incorporated in the conservative modernization enjoying social legislation and a certain political participation controlled (when not repressed) by the state. In turn, the middle class was attracted by the expansion of public employment, by the protection of the status and economic interests of the professions (provided by professional regulation), and by the expansion of the channels for the presentation of their demands to the state (implemented by the creation of corporatist entities). The industrial class came to count on a level of influence with the state and access to public resources which it had not previously known. The large rural landholders, despite their relative political decadence, continued to be supported by the state, proof of which is the 1930s coffee policy, preservation of the landholding structure, and the blocking of labor and social legislation in the countryside. Indeed, only rural workers were excluded from the multi-class coalition which supported the Varguista state, sacrificed to the interests of the fazendeiros5.

• 6 Schmitter, Philippe, “Still the Century of Corporatism?”, The Review of Politics, 1974, vol. 36-1, (...)

4Corporatism, understood as a type of relationship between state and society6, constitutes a fundamental instrument to allow two aspects of conservative modernization put into practice from 1930 onwards:

• 10 Saes, Décio, Classe média e sistema político no Brasil, São Paulo, T. A. Queiroz, 1984, p. 107-112 (...)

6The literature on the Brazilian middle class in the first half of the twentieth century is quite scarce. Of importance here is the work of Décio Saes who, in order to examine their political behavior, breaks it down into a superior group (in which the professions are included) and an inferior group (consisting, amongst others, of bank workers and those employed in commerce). In the post-1930 period, according to Saes, the lower middle class adhered to official trade unionism, believing that this was an efficient means of implementing their interests, with the support of the state and against the resistance of employers. As a result, during this period there emerged unions of commercial workers, bank workers, and journalists. On the other hand, the upper middle class continued to profess its excluding liberalism, expressed in its opposition to the political incorporation of the urban proletariat. Politically, the upper middle class renewed its alliance with the agro-export sector10.

• 11 Trindade, Hélgio, Integralismo. O fascismo brasileiro na década de 30, São Paulo, Difel, 1979, p.  (...)

7Saes’ propositions seem convincing to me, but they need some adaptations. It is very probable that most of the upper middle class and the professions, especially, had a liberal-elitist worldview. However, the socialist idea also had its supporters in this social group and, on the other hand, it cannot be forgotten that the leadership of integralism came to a large extent from lawyers, doctors, and engineers11.

• 12 Mills, C. Wright, A nova classe média, Rio de Janeiro, Zahar Editores, 1976, p. 131-133.

8Writing at the beginning of the 1950s, Wright Mills pointed to the advance of salaried employment among the professions in the United States at that time. The same phenomenon occurred in Brazil and was already observable in the 1930s and 1940s. Mills divides professionals into two classes: the traditional, especially persistent among lawyers and doctors; and employees, part of the new middle class (white collar workers). The description which he makes of the two groups serve for the Brazilian context. The cleavage is not based on earnings, but the degree of independence in the performance of their profession. Hence, the former group maintains a unity of work which they can administer alone and enjoy a large among of professional autonomy, establishing their fees and working conditions, while the latter group was limited in its professional action by the decisions of their superiors and the regulations of the public or private institutions in which they worked12.

• 13 Diniz, Marli, Os donos do saber. Profissões e monopólios profissionais, Rio de Janeiro, Revan, 200 (...)
• 14 Donnangelo, Maria Cecilia, Medicina e sociedade, São Paulo, Pioneira, 1975, p. 69-71. Pereira Neto, (...)
• 15 Vannucchi, Marco Aurélio, “Estado, capitalismo e profissão: metamorfoses da advocacia nas décadas (...)

9In Brazil a large number of engineers were employed by state or private companies13. The expansion of public health services led to an increase in the number of doctors receiving salaries14. Among lawyers paid employment also rose due to the development of the state apparatus and capitalism in the country. However, among doctors and lawyers being a professional in the strict sense remained very frequent15. Some of the lawyers, engineers, and doctors who had public employment or worked for private companies also had offices or consultation rooms where they spent part of the day. Those who were self-employed expected their corporatist entities to ensure the closure of the professional services market. Those employed also valued the closure of the market, which guaranteed the exclusivity of lawyers, engineers, and doctors with degrees in the occupation of public and private positions in the labor market. However, those who were employed, rather than independent professionals, were equally interested in their entities acting to improve work and pay conditions. Historically unions were better equipped to defend the interests of employees, although professional councils made movements in this direction.

• 16 Jaguaribe, Hélio, Desenvolvimento econômico e desenvolvimento político, Rio de Janeiro, Paz e Terr (...)
• 17 Queiroz, Suely Robles de, Os radicais da República, São Paulo, Brasiliense, 1986. Pinheiro, Paulo (...)
• 18 Cardoso, Adalberto, Classes médias e política no Brasil: 1922-2016, Rio de Janeiro, FGV Editora, 2 (...)

10During the First Republic, the middle class consolidated itself as a relevant political actor in the Brazilian scenario. The relevance of the political participation of this social segment led some authors to the (exaggerated) interpretation that the 1930 Revolution had raised the middle class to power16. Even though, agreeing with Saes, it can be admitted that in the First Republic their predominant actions were conservative, as allies of the agro-export oligarchies, their participation in movements contesting the status quo (some of them with a strongly disruptive nature) is undeniable, such as Jacobinism from the beginning of the Republic, the civilista movement from the 1900s, and tenentismo from the 1920s17. The middle class was already a significant size in the First Republic. Adalberto Cardoso estimates that it corresponded to almost 15 % of the occupied population in Brazilian cities in 1920.18

• 19 Miceli, Sergio, “Intelectuais e classe dirigente no Brasil (1920-1945)”, in Sergio Miceli, Intelec (...)

11In its first four years, the Varguista regime regulated at least 13 professions (classified as such in Decree Law n^o 2381 from 1940). This initiative had great potential to attract middle class support for the government, since it tended to be converted into an increase in prestige and material gains for the professions19. The post-1930 regulation model was based on the requirement for a degree and the delimitation of a list of exclusive activities for the professions in question. In most cases, professional accreditation and inspection were attributed to a ministry. In relation to lawyers, engineers, architects, and surveyors (and doctors only in 1945), these prerogatives were transferred to the respective professional councils, directed by the professional groups themselves (Table 1).

• 20 Coelho, Op. Cit., p. 188-189. Bonelli, Maria da Gloria, Profissionalismo e política no mundo do di (...)

12The demand for the closing of the professional market by some of the more traditional professions (lawyers, engineers, and doctors) came from much before the 1930 Revolution. These demands were targeted at the práticos, individuals without degrees who competed with graduate professionals. In the post-1930 regulations, the práticos were either prevented from exercising various professions or suffered severe restrictions on their activities.20

• 21 Coelho, Op. Cit. Bonelli, Op. Cit. Venâncio Filho, Op. Cit.
• 22 Decree n^o 22.478, dated 20 February 1933.

13Inspired by the Order of Lawyers of Paris, the organization of an institution, charged with establishing the conditions to exercise the profession and run by the professional category was an explicit aim of the Institute of Brazilian Lawyers (IAB) since its foundation in the first half of the nineteenth century21. The creation of the Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil (OAB - Order of Lawyers of Brazil), in November 1930, allowed the lawyer elite to assume since then the regulation of the profession. Among its corporatist concerns, the most important, alongside the moralization of the professional category, was the control of the offer of services. The board of OAB adopted three measures for this: 1.) it prohibited judges, members of the Prosecution Service (Ministério Público), and other public employees from acting as lawyers; 2.) it reserved the large majority of judicial acts for lawyers; 3.) it restricted the actions of rábulas (lawyers without degrees) who became part of the order in a subordinate position22.

• 23 Its name changed to the National Union of Engineers in 1933 and to the Union of Engineers of Rio d (...)
• 24 Telles, Op. Cit.
• 25 Diniz, Marli, Op. Cit.
• 26 Los Rios Filho, Op. Cit. Telles, Op. Cit. Revista Senge-RJ, Op. Cit.

14Since its foundation in Rio de Janeiro in 1931, the Central Union of Engineers23 was concerned with the delimitation of an exclusive service market for its professional category. Its foundational manifesto states that one of its aims was “to prevent projects from being implemented with defined technical responsibility, assuring the technical direction of engineers in industries and technical organizations”24. The Union of Engineers, at least at its beginning, was supported by the Engineering Club, founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1880, which offered it financial assistance and lent it a room25. The union performed a central role in professional regulation. At the beginning of 1932, it submitted a draft bill with this purpose to the Minister of Labor, Salgado Filho. The following year, the ministry organized a commission to write the definitive version of the Professional Regulation Bill26. In December 1933, the government regulated engineers in Decree n^o 23.569, which stipulated a series of activities as being exclusive to engineers with degrees (but allowed the práticos currently working to continue to do so) and created an entity to inspect professional activities, the Federal Council of Engineering and Architecture.

• 27 At the beginning of the 1940s its name was altered to the Union of Doctors of Rio de Janeiro.

15Founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1927, the Brazilian Medical Union27 focused on the attempt to delimit an exclusive labor market for doctors who had graduated from the medical faculties officially recognized in the country. This attempt to undermine the competition to these doctors had the following targets:

• 29 Vieira, Op. Cit.

16In 1931 the Medical Union of Rio Grande do Sul was founded, also aimed at closing the medical services markets29. A degree from the beginning of 1932 (Decree n^o 20.931/1932) established the requirement for a degree to exercise medicine, as well as stipulating the list of activities to be exclusively performed by doctors. The decree prohibited doctors who graduated from Brazilian institutions not recognized by the state from exercising the profession, as well as imposing conditions for the practice of medicine by those who had graduated abroad.

• 30 Schmitter, Philippe, Interest Conflict and Political Change in Brazil, Stanford, Stanford Universi (...)

17Professional councils of lawyers and engineers not only assumed professional regulations, but also the representation of the interests of their respective professional categories with the state30. As a result, the leaders of these entities became frequent interlocutors of the regime in the presentation of demands in the name of their members.

• 31 CPDOC-FGV, Arquivo Gustavo Capanema, GC h 1938.01.08, documento 75.

18State recognition of councils’ ability to represent their professional categories created competition with unions within the corporatist apparatus, as is evident in the following episode. At the end of the 1930s, the Minister of Education and Health, Gustavo Capanema, organized a commission, composed of ministry staff and representatives of medical entities, charged with drafting the bill to create the Order of Brazilian Doctors. During the commission’s work, the bulletin of the Union of Doctors published an article which defended the separation of attributions between the Order and the union. In it, the creation of the Order was seen as incorporating doctors in the corporatist organization: “Com o advento do Estado Novo ... vão ser compreendidos os médicos no plano geral de organização totalitária do país, por classes profissionais.”31. However, the union’s position was defeated, and the majority of the commission proposed that the body to be created assume the ‘modern concept’ of the professional order, having the responsibility both for professional regulation (already included in the ‘classic concept’ of the professional order) and the defense of the material interests of doctors:

• 33 CPDOC-FGV, Arquivo Gustavo Capanema, GC h 1938.01.08, documento 16.
• 34 Moreira, Vital, Auto-regulação profissional e administração pública, Coimbra, Almedina, 1997, p. 6 (...)
• 35 Ferreira, Nuno Estêvão, “Seção Ordens profissionais”, in José Eduardo Franco; José Augusto Mourão; (...)

19The stated inspiration for the model adopted by the commission was the Order of Portuguese Doctors, then being studied by the Salazarist dictatorship.33 Moreover, the accumulation in the same entity of the functions of professional regulation and the representation of interests occurred in various European countries before the Second World War. In his presentation of a typology of self-regulation professional entities on that continent, Vital Moreira suggests that the most paradigmatic of them is the one that combines both functions. In European fascist regimes, there was tendency for professional orders to exercise with exclusivity the representation of the interests of professional categories, at the same time that other professional entities were abolished or prevented from being created34. In Portugal, the Order of Lawyers was created before the advent of the Estado Novo. The Order of Engineers and the Order of Doctors were created in the 1930s. Estado Novo legislation allowed for the organization of national unions for each of the professions. In the case of lawyers, engineers, and doctors, the respective orders were equivalent to national unions. The representation function of the professional category of the orders was recognized: each of them had a seat guaranteed in the Corporatist Council35. In Brazil, professional councils never enjoyed an exclusivity of professional representation. They had to coexist both with association of voluntary affiliation and professional unions.

• 36 Nunes, Edson de Oliveira, A gramática política do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Garamond, 2010.
• 37 O’Donnell, Guillermo, “Acerca del corporativismo y la cuestion del Estado”, in Jorge Lanzaro (comp (...)
• 38 Boschi, Renato, Elites industriais e democracia, Rio de Janeiro, Edições Graal, 1979, p. 37-38.

20For a better framing of this article, publications on corporatism by political scientists deserves to be invoked. This includes the finding that despite its centrality, corporatism was not the only means by which state and society interrelated in Latin America from the 1930s onwards: it coexisted with other “gramáticas políticas”36. The recognition of this phenomenon allowed Guillermo O’Donnell to emphasize that in a situation where corporate entities were subordinated to the state (such as the bureaucratic authoritarian regimes in Latin Americans in the 1960s and 1970s) and in which they are “la expresión institucional de los intereses de la burguesía y de la clase obrera”, it is not obligatory for society to be submitted to the state in a uniform manner, since relations between state and society exist in a broader scenario, not being resumed in corporatist forms37. In turn, Renato Boschi notes that the Brazilian industrial business class, in addition to using corporatist spheres, continued to present their demands to the state through personal contacts, clientelist policies, and non-corporatist class associations38.

• 39 Nunes, Op. Cit., p. 63.
• 40 Ibid., p. 64-65.
• 41 Cardoso, Adalberto, A trama da modernidade, Rio de Janeiro, IUPERJ-UCAM/Revan, 1999, p. 108-116.

21During the Varguista regime, a very recurrent combination of political grammars, used by all social groups (with the exception of rural workers), was corporatism and clientelism. Edson Nunes observes that both acted to lessen social conflicts39, which made them particularly useful to a regime concerned with constructing a wide-ranging base of social support and simultaneously maintaining civil society under its guardianship. I propose that corporatism and clientelism mutually reinforced each other. An example of how this occurred is given by Edson Nunes: leaders of official unions who had long mandates and did favors for unionized workers, who then became their clientele40. Adalberto Cardoso examines a specific case of clientelist relations between the board of a corporatist union and its members in his study of the Metalworkers’ Union of São Paulo. Joaquim dos Santos Andrade, known as Joaquinzão, started his administration of the union in the middle of the 1960s. This was marked by his adhesion to the military dictatorship. The union’s board offered welfarist services to its members, made feasible by the obligatory contribution of all metalworkers in São Paulo. At the same time, the union restricted the number of members, since membership constituted a prerogative concretized in access to medical and dental care, legal assistance, etc. In this way, the board of the union and members exchanged welfarist services for votes41. In cases like this, clientelism mediated not only the relations of unions with their members, but equally unions with the state, among which ties of loyalty and the exchange of favors.

• 42 Miceli, Op. Cit., p. 209-211, 270-272.

23Levi Carneiro, first president of the Order of Lawyers, who held the position until 1938, was part of the intellectual and bureaucratic elite of the regime42. In these years, the Federal Council invested in an agenda aimed at its institutional consolidation and the specific interests of lawyers. For this, it was important to have good relations with the government. Levi Carneiro’s successor, Fernando de Melo Viana, told the members of the federal council after meeting the Minister of Justice in October 1938 that he had found:

• 45 Diário de Notícias, 10/4/1943, p. 2.
• 46 A Noite, 30/4/1944, p. 10. FIOCRUZ, Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, Depoimentos orais do projeto 1995: 50 an (...)
• 47 Pereira Neto, André de Faria, Ética e Institucionalização da profissão médica (1927/1957), Rio de (...)
• 48 FIOCRUZ, Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, Depoimentos orais do projeto 1995: 50 anos de criação do Conselho R (...)
• 49 FIOCRUZ, Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, Depoimentos orais do projeto 1995: 50 anos de criação do Conselho R (...)

25In April 1943, the Union of Doctors of Rio de Janeiro awarded Vargas the title of benemérito.45 Possibly around this period, the entity received land and a loan from the federal government to construct its head office.46 Two statements given in the 1990s by doctors who participated in the union’s activities at the beginning of the 1940s recognized the proximity between Álvaro Tavares de Souza, who was president of the union between 1938 and 195147, and Vargas. According to Carlos Grey, “Tavares de Souza (...) tinha a grande vantagem de ser gaúcho muito próximo ao Getúlio, ele era um cidadão muito próximo ao Getúlio.”48 On his part, Renato Pacheco Filho stated: “Álvaro Tavares de Souza era presidente do sindicato (...) Era amigo de Getúlio, gaúcho (...)”.49

• 50 Gomes, Angela de Castro, Burguesia e trabalho, Rio de Janeiro, Editora Campus, 1979, p. 252.
• 51 Vianna, Op. Cit., p. 227-235; Gomes, Angela de Castro, A invenção do trabalhismo, São Paulo/Rio de (...)

26The mere alignment of the leaders of corporatist entities to the regime was not sufficient to give them legitimacy within the social groups in whose name they spoke. The state recognized this relative lack of representivity of corporatist bodies by ignoring the principle, dear to corporatist doctrine, that they enjoy a monopoly of representation of social groups and professional categories. Consequently, the regime maintained the interlocution with non-obligatory entities, admitting that these were also representatives of the business class or the professions. The monopolistic principle was only observed in the case of the urban working class, aimed at its political control50. Nevertheless, the regime made a reasonable effort to lend legitimacy to official unions among urban workers51.

• 52 Rodrigues, Leôncio Martins, Destino do sindicalismo, Rio de Janeiro, Centro Edelstein de Pesquisas (...)

28There is a reasonable consensus in the literature about the correlation between representativity and union membership levy, although this should not be taken as the only indicator of union power. Leôncio Rodrigues offers an argument of an empirical nature to sustain the existence of correspondence between the two aspects by observing that the union leaders sought to expand (and not reduce) the number of union members52.

• 53 Anuário Estatístico Brasileiro 1939-1940, Rio de Janeiro, IBGE, c.1940, p. 706.
• 54 Anuário Estatístico Brasileiro 1941-1945, Rio de Janeiro, IBGE, 1946, p. 30.
• 55 Anuário Estatístico Brasileiro 1938, Rio de Janeiro, IBGE, c. 1939, p. 479.
• 56 Anuário Estatístico do Brasil 1955, Rio de Janeiro, IBGE, 1955, p. 416.
• 57 Cardoso, Adalberto, “Sindicalismo, trabalho e empresa”, in IBGE, Estatísticas do século XX, Rio de (...)

29Moving on to the quantitative data available, in 1938 there were 10,252 unionized professionals53. The 1940 Census counted 118,687 people in the category which covered professions, private teachers, religion, and private administration54. Using these numbers, we have a unionization rate of approximately 9 % among the professions. The number of unions for the professions was substantially inferior to employer and employee unions. In 1938, there were 118 unions for professions in the country, 1006 for employers, and 1133 for employees55. In 1945, these numbers were respectively: 68, 549, and 87256. It should be noted that the union statistics prepared by the state in this period are reasonably imprecise57.

• 58 Diário de Pernambuco, 30/7/1935, p. 4; O Dia, 28/3/1937, p. 2; O Combate, 20/3/1934, p. 4; Repúbli (...)
• 59 Vannucchi, Marco Aurélio, “O corporativismo dualista: conselhos profissionais e sindicatos no Bras (...)
• 60 Diário da Noite, 8/11/1944, p. 3.

30I found records of the existence, at some moment during the Vargas period, of 11 engineering unions, organized in the Federal District and in the following states: Pernambuco, Paraná, Maranhão, Santa Catarina, Mato Grosso, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, and Pará.58 In relation to lawyers’ unions, I found evidence for the existence of only two in the period covered by this article: in Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul59. In turn, at the end of 1944, there were 13 doctors’ unions in the country, as follows: Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, Paraná, Rio Grande do Norte, Santa Catarina, Fortaleza, Bahia, Belo Horizonte, Ribeirão Preto, Campinas, Pará, Juiz de Fora, and Petrópolis.60

• 61 FIOCRUZ, Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, Fundo Álvaro Tavares de Souza, ATS/AM/19301209-2, Boletim do Sindic (...)
• 62 Anuário Estatístico Brasileiro 1956, Rio de Janeiro, IBGE, 1956, p. 333.
• 63 Vieira, Op. Cit., p. 107.
• 64 Anuário Estatístico Brasileiro 1956, Op. Cit., p. 333.
• 65 Beraldo, Renilson, “Associativismo médico, profissionalização e intercâmbio científico”, Revista d (...)
• 66 Jornal do Brasil, 25/9/1937, p. 13.
• 67 Anuário Estatístico Brasileiro 1956, Op. Cit., p. 333.
• 68 Correio da Manhã, 19 jul. 1936, p. 5.
• 69 Anuário Estatístico Brasileiro 1937, Rio de Janeiro, IBGE, 1937, p. 722.
• 70 Arquivo do Sindicato dos Advogados do Rio de Janeiro, Atas do Sindicato Brasileiro de Advogados, 2 (...)

31I also obtained data about the number of members about some of these unions. In 1940, the Brazilian Medical Union had 3632 registered members, of whom only 800 were paying.61 I only found data about the number of doctors for 1954, when there were 23,195 doctors in the country, of whom around six thousand were in the capital62. In 1933, the Union of Doctors of Rio Grande do Sul had 347 members63. In 1954, there existed 1832 practicing doctors in that state64. In 1931, the Doctor’s Union of Paraná had, according to its leaders, 99 members out of around 170 doctors existing in the state65. In 1937, the Central Union of Engineers had 1300 members.66 In 1954, there were 11,566 engineers in the country, of whom 3514 worked in Rio de Janeiro67. According to its leaders, the Brazilian Union of Lawyers had 600 members in 1936.68 That year there were 9308 lawyers active in the country, of whom a little more than two thousand were in the Federal District69. However, the number of lawyers actually active in the union was not very significant based on participation in elections to the entity’s leadership. In the 1936 elections, 18 members voted; 19 in 1938; and 36 in 1941.70

• 71 Cardoso, Adalberto Moreira, A década neoliberal e a crise dos sindicatos no Brasil, São Paulo, Boi (...)
• 72 Rodrigues, Op. Cit., p. 112-113.

34Other aspects can also be considered as indications of union power. Adalberto Cardoso suggests that it should be measured “pelo poder de iniciar ações coletivas, encerrá-las quando for o caso, ou impedir que aconteçam sem o consentimento do sindicato”71. In a definition which moves the axis of mobilization capacity (as in Cardoso) to the effectiveness of union action, Leôncio Rodrigues proposes that union power is “a capacidade de as elites sindicais imporem decisões (geralmente na forma de obtenção de reivindicações), vetarem decisões ou – alternativa menos favorável – modificarem decisões que partam do governo, das empresas ou de outras elites.”72. Without excluding the number of members, we can thus measure the power of a union through its capacity to mobilize the professional category in relation to proposals or vetoes and, equally, its capacity to impose its position on the state and employers.

• 73 Article 94 of Decree no. 20.784 from 1931.
• 74 Decree Law n^o 3.995 from 1941.
• 75 Decree Law n^o 2.162 of 1940.
• 76 Diário de Notícias, 30/1/1943, p. 10.
• 77 Decree-Law n^o 5.670 from 1943.
• 78 Cardoso, A década neoliberal, p. 211.

36The obligatory payment of an annuity by professionals to councils and unions reinforced their capacity for action. OAB had enjoyed this source of resources since 193273 and the Council of Engineering since 194174. All lawyers and engineers were obliged to pay a levy to their councils, with a value of 20,000 réis. This value was not high: in 1940 the minimum wage in the country varied between 90,000 and 240,000 réis75. After 1940, professional unions came to count on the obligatory payment of the ‘union levy,’ which had to be paid by all members of the professions and not just those members of unions. In 1943, lawyers in the Federal District had to pay their union the value of Cr$ 60.76 At that time the monthly minimum wage was Cr$ 30077. As various scholars have shown, in their discussion of worker unions, the obligatory annuity could have a perverse effect: seeking to maintain control over the significant financial resources of union, their leaders discouraged new members from joining, in order to prevent electoral competition78. This affected the representativity of unions and consequently their capacity to offer satisfactory support to the state. However, the Varguista regime lacked professional councils and unions who were both loyal and legitimate within their professional categories.

• 79 Diário Carioca, 28/6/1945, p. 1 and 11; Correio da Manhã, 19/10/1945, p. 12; Diário de Notícias, 2 (...)

37I found almost no indications in the documents consulted which suggested that professionals councils or unions had any sort of mobilization capacity (it is possible that this reveals the low mobilization capacity of these entities). The only exception I found was OAB. In 1945, the Federal Council and the Council of the Federal District of the Order of Lawyers organized a manifesto of support to the Udenista candidate for president of the Republic, Eduardo Gomes. Around one thousand lawyers signed it,79 between one quarter and one third of the lawyers in Rio de Janeiro.

• 80 FIOCRUZ, Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, Fundo Álvaro Tavares de Souza, ATS/PI/19381240; FIOCRUZ, Casa de Os (...)
• 81 Boletim do Ministério do Trabalho, Indústria e Comércio. Rio de Janeiro: Ministério do Trabalho, I (...)

38More data is available to assess the effectiveness of professional councils and unions. The greatest victory of the Union of Engineers in the Vargas period was professional regulation and the creation of the Professional Council. Perhaps the same can be said about the Doctors’ Union. However, the creation of the council of doctors, delayed and occurring in the context of the crisis of the Estado Novo, also demonstrated a certain fragility on the part of the union. This is because the union had fought for years for the creation of a Professional Council, facing strong opposition from sectors of its profession category, and only obtained the measure when the regime was trying to survive, attentive to the demands of the sectors still loyal to it.80 It is equally important to note that the Union of Doctors received land and a loan to build its head office from the government, while the Federal Council of Engineering used the facilities of the Ministry of Labor.81 In summary, the major gains of these corporatist entities in the period under scrutiny were of an institutional nature: control over professional categories, facilities, and a permanent source of funds (due to the operation of the union levy and the annuities paid to the professional councils). For lawyers, engineers, and doctors, the most important action carried out by their unions and professional councils in the period under scrutiny was probably the maintenance of an exclusive labor market.

• 82 FIOCRUZ, Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, Depoimentos orais do projeto 1995: 50 anos de criação do Conselho R (...)
• 83 A Noite, 29/6/1944, p. 4.
• 84 A Noite, 29/6/1944, p. 4. FIOCRUZ, Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, Depoimentos orais do projeto 1995: 50 ano (...)

39I found two contemporary assessments of the power of the Brazilian Union of Doctors during the Vargas administration. In an interview granted in the 1990s, Renato Pacheco Filho, who had been a union member in the 1930s, the same period when his father had been its leader, said the representivity of the union was weak and that the doctors did not believe in it. He explained that this situation was due to the restriction of the union’s activities to doctors who had consulting rooms, since by law the entity could not defend doctors who were public employees.82 The other assessment was made in the middle of 1944, when a group of young leftwing doctors joined the union. A newspaper report from A Noite explained that the doctors had concluded that “as suas reivindicações não chegariam oficialmente ao conhecimento do governo senão por intermédio daquele órgão” despite the “reduzido número de associados” it had.83 The group represented the interests of salaried doctors at the beginning of their career.84 This episode demonstrates how a low membership rate did not necessarily make a union a failure.