Official Announcement

Class Unity (Unidade Classista - UC), the trade union wing of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), held its III National Congress in São Paulo from April 18-20 under the slogan "Class Unity, Socialist Future."  

Over three days, delegates from across Brazil analyzed the national and international political landscape, discussed communists' role in the workers' movement, and approved guiding theses to steer their activism in Brazil's labor movement. These resolutions aim to contribute to working-class reorganization toward people's power and socialism. 

The opening plenary took place at SINSPREV (Union of Workers in Health, Labor, Social Security, and Social Assistance of São Paulo State), with Ernesto Quiqui from the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) in attendance. The Congress received solidarity messages from allied organizations including:

• MST (Landless Workers' Movement);
• Intersindical Central;
• Resistência/PSOL;
• UST;
• Movimento Luta de Classes (Class Strugle Movement);
• Intersindical Instrumento da Classe Trabalhadora.

PCB collectives also participated:

• Communist Youth Union (UJC);
• Ana Montenegro Classist Feminist Collective;
• LGBT Comunist;
• Minervino de Oliveira Black Workers' Collective.

Following the opening session on the 18th, delegates split into five discussion groups, where they exhaustively debated the Theses Document prepared by the outgoing leadership throughout the 19th. On the 20th, the closing plenary was held, where participants continued discussions on the revised theses drafted by the Systematization Committee. 

After debates and approval of the III Congress Theses, delegates elected the new national leadership of Class Unity (Unidade Classista) — composed with gender parity — which will be tasked with coordinating the PCB's trade union work nationwide, fighting for the reorganization of labor relations, advancing toward the National Meeting of the Working Class (ENCLAT), and building unity in struggle and a popular alternative for Brazil. 

Below is the Political Declaration of the III Congress of Class Unity (Unidade Classista):

POLITICAL DECLARATION OF THE III CONGRESS OF CLASS UNIT (UNIDADE CLASSISTA)

The III National Congress of Class Unit (Unidade Classista - UC), the PCB-led trade union and workers’ faction, took place between January and April 2025, with hundreds of delegates and observers from 18 Brazilian states. Since the Second Congress in 2018, UC has grown quantitatively and qualitatively, evident in the diverse composition of delegates—workers from metallurgy, oil, municipal services, construction, transportation, education, social security, and more. 

The outgoing National Coordination’s political assessment highlighted progress in internal organization, the formation of grassroots committees, and state-level coordination. Despite challenges, the balance is positive, considering UC’s expanded presence in various labor sectors. The faction has played key roles in class-struggle movements, such as the 2024 federal public education strike and federal public service workers’ struggles. 

The III National Congress of Class Unity (Unidade Classista) took place during a period of intense sharpening of class struggle. Amid capitalism's crisis, workers in Brazil and worldwide face a complex and challenging situation—both nationally and internationally—within a context of imperialist forces reorganizing across all countries, driven by the economies of the U.S. and EU. The repercussions manifest in imperialist wars and renewed attacks against the working class. 

As in all moments of deep crisis, fascists — capital's historical shock troops — have grown rapidly, doing the bourgeoisie's dirty work to expand profit rates, wealth and property concentration, environmental destruction, and the commodification of essential goods like water and energy, which are vital to life. 

As a consequence of this process, we witness millions of migrants wandering across regions of the planet – victims of imperialist wars – alongside the expansion of misery and hunger worldwide, increased violence against the working people, the plundering of public coffers, rising food inflation and cost of living, as well as the intensification of climate change-related disasters. These are the primary manifestations today of this exploitative system which, in its process of relative decay, employs every means to continue the exploitation of workers and the oppression of humanity. In Brazil, this process has led to a dramatic rise in homelessness, as well as precarious labor – devoid of rights and with meager wages. 

Capital has launched a violent offensive against the rights and guarantees of the working class, subordinating nation-states to its interests through neoliberal policies, restrictions on democratic freedoms, fiscal austerity, extreme labor precarization, the looting of public funds via debt interest payments, and above all, the deepening of privatization policies – through which major monopolies appropriate public assets built by generations of collective effort. In other words, capitalism is a mode of production that relentlessly seeks to maintain and intensify the oppression of humanity to preserve and expand surplus value extraction and profit rates. 

The capitalist system offers peoples nothing but wars, environmental destruction, misery, alienation, and assaults on workers' social rights. There exists an explicit contradiction between capitalism and humanity, as the continuation of this system poses an existential threat to all lifeforms, degrading environmental, economic, and political conditions. This means the only way to defend humanity from the destruction wrought by capitalist production is to overcome it and build, through revolutionary process, the socialist alternative – advancing toward communist society. 

The current multidimensional global crisis has laid bare, in a profound and instructive manner, all the flaws of this system of working-class exploitation by the bourgeoisie - exposing both the weaknesses and the class character of the State. This instrument operates as the organizing front for capitalist interests, to the detriment of the majority of the population. The State persists in implementing policies that safeguard bourgeois interests while intensifying economic austerity measures and dismantling workers' rights and protections. This reality manifests clearly in the economic policies of Brazil's current Lula/Alckmin administration, such as the fiscal framework that limits public investment to channel resources toward parasitic rent-seeking through public debt interest payments. 

Though wounded by crisis, U.S. imperialism —  the hegemonic pole of the imperialist system and the organic political expression of big capital —  employs every possible maneuver to maintain this oppressive order. This includes waging an irrational trade war that risks plunging us into deep recession and spiraling inflation. It actively promotes and fuels wars against peoples across the globe - in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Ukraine, Palestine, Yemen, and beyond. The governments of the U.S. and EU, through their political and financial support, bow to Zionist sectors in Israel that, with their genocidal policies in the Middle East, have nearly completely destroyed Palestine and its lands. 

The working-class movement faces additional challenges, particularly the silence and/or retreat of most trade union centrals in this adverse political climate. Our Congress reaffirmed the necessity to overcome class conciliation both as practice and perspective for the working class. However, this alone cannot address the serious problems plaguing working-class trade union organization. 

In this context, the Fordist-based trade union structure was central to our debates, given the understanding that this model can no longer fully address the new forms of resistance and struggle against labor exploitation under capitalism - particularly with capital's deployment of new information and communication technologies. Precarious work conditions, platformization, uberization, "pejotização" (outsourcing through micro-enterprises), and forced entrepreneurialism are key elements in understanding the defensive position of contemporary trade unionism. This reality demands a profound reorganization of the Fordist-era union structures we inherited, taking into account the specific characteristics of our socioeconomic formation and the enduring legacy of slavery and racism that continues to reproduce itself daily. 

Particular emphasis was placed on discussions about women, feminism, gender and sexual dissidence, the fight against racism, LGBTQIA+phobia, ableism, as well as strategies to confront and overcome the patriarchal order that is intertwined with capitalism. Within trade union practice, there was clear recognition of the need to move beyond traditional approaches that treat these struggles as merely supplementary, and instead understand their structural and constitutive character. 

At the same time, we acknowledge the alarming offensive by far-right forces, manifested both in proto-fascist demonstrations and governments that target activists and political organizations, as well as in the racist, misogynist, LGBTQIA+-phobic and xenophobic oppression spreading across Brazil and the world. 

Faced with this reality, the challenges for the trade union movement involve strengthening and developing unions as spaces of organization, unity, solidarity, and struggle – spaces that are also cultural, welcoming, and truly representative of all workers. This requires deepening both immediate sectoral demands and broader working-class struggles, with the goal of advancing class consciousness and organization. Building People's Power means mobilizing not only to defend rights but also to march toward overcoming capitalism through socialist construction. 

The Congress highlighted the need to advance programmatic construction by:

Strengthening initiatives like the Popular Trade Union Forum and Youth for Democratic Rights and Freedoms;

Expanding local and state-level trade union and social fronts;

Building the National Education Assembly;

Addressing organizational and leadership challenges within FONASEFE (National Federation of Federal Public Service Workers);

Reconstructing the National Coordination of Federal Public Service Unions (CNESF) into a broader National Confederation of Public Service Unions (CNESP) – encompassing workers across all government levels and state-owned enterprises;

Supporting other initiatives aligned with the strategic goal of advancing the National Meeting of the Working Class (ENCLAT), both for unified class-struggle organizing and for transforming outdated union structures. 

The III CONUC resolutions emphasized the urgent necessity to reorganize the working class by connecting struggles across trade union, popular, and youth movements nationwide, and rebuild the class-struggle camp to launch a counteroffensive against the bourgeoisie and its governments. 

On the General Front of Struggles, we approved resolutions that unite trade union battles with fights against oppression - including:

✓ The campaign for a 30-hour workweek without wage cuts;

✓ Demands for dignified working and living conditions;

✓ Defense of public Education, Healthcare, and Social Security;

✓ Repeal of all anti-worker reforms;

✓ Organizing the unemployed to build a major popular-class bloc against ongoing attacks. 

The flags of struggle adopted by Congress establish a platform that will guide our actions across trade union, popular, and youth movements. 

The III National Congress of Class Unity (UC) reaffirmed the urgency to:

• Build and strengthen the class-struggle camp within labor movements;
• Advance the National Meeting of the Working Class (ENCLAT) - organizing workers from their workplaces and communities;
• Bolster the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) and its International Union Federations (public sector, education, construction, transport, etc.) - celebrating this global instrument of struggle's 80th anniversary in 2025.

These are essential tasks to ensure this cycle of struggles succeeds in laying the foundations for People's Power. We leave this Congress stronger, confident in our path, and challenged to become a leading force in Brazil's working-class battles. 

The Congress calls on all militants, unions, and social movements to:

✊ Build a united, class-struggle May 1st;

�� Join the plebiscite campaign against 6×1 work shifts and for taxing the rich;

⏳ Fight for 30-hour workweeks with no pay reduction;

�� Strengthen anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist international solidarity.

São Paulo, April 2025
Class Unit, Socialist Future!