O trabalho das pessoas com deficiência e as relações sociais de produção capitalista : uma análise crítica da política de cotas no Brasil

Abstract

The objective of this investigation is to analyze the relation between work and people with disabilities in Brazil, examining the quota policy which establishes the reservation of vacancies for people with disabilities in the formal work market and in the public service the direct or indirect administration, in the three spheres of government. In its legal and institutional aspects, the mentioned policy is anchored in the 1988´s Federal Constitution of Brazil and in other norms which constitute the guidelines, the programs, the objectives, the principles and the goals that compound the social policies which are implemented by the capitalist State. Starting from the presumption that work was and still is the originating and founding base of the social being, the present study intends to demonstrate that in any historical period of mankind primitive community, mode of production slave-based, feudal and capitalist the argument which better explains the exclusion of people with disabilities from the production processes relays on the following central idea: in the primitive communities, the fact that they could not produce their own material existence, through their own labor, and in the other modes of production, besides that, the fact that they could not produce the surplus. This gets more evident when made clear that the logics of the capitalist s production organization, directed to the maxim extraction of work, productivity and profit, does not sustain and does not need the workforce of those people. Even the small number of people who are working in the formal work market is employed only because of the pressure made by the disabled-rights movement and the existence of the legal regulation, which, despite its limits, in this case, plays an important role. The conclusion is that the law ends up producing an effect more ideological than practical, as it transmits to the society in general, and specifically to people with disabilities, an ideological argument by which the simple legal prescription grants the right to work as a concrete reality. This is revealed when, after more than 20 years from the promulgation of the 1988 s Federal Constitution, which granted the reservation of vacancies, the unemployment rate among people with disabilities in work age is still superior to 91%, while among people without disabilities the number floats around 10%. The right-to-work guaranty for people with disabilities represents the result of a process of fights marked by uncountable social-economical, political and cultural relations and mediations which express contradictories class interests, a fact that gets evident as the corporations and the capitalist State resist following the law statement. In spite of this conclusion, the disrespect for the law may be used by disabled-rights movement as an important political instrument with two objectives: to denounce the capital s system and the State, not only demanding the respect for the law, but also pointing the contradiction between what the law states and the concrete reality; and, through this political fight, to create a class conscience among people with disabilities engaged with the social mobilizations committed to the working class interests.