Freedom through work or work to achieve freedom?: the case of recyclable materials pickers

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss the labor of the recyclable materials pickers, as also the actions from the State and Society related to them thorough perspectives on the Solid Waste National Policy (Política Nacional de Resíduos Sólidos − PNRS, in Portuguese). The starting point is the labor exploitation from the pickers, followed by the construction of the solidarity economy by the State and its meaning. Next we proceed to the institutionalization of the Recyclable Materials Pickers National Movement in the context of selective collection, coming up finally considering the PNRS, as regards the Law’s articles referring to pickers. It was tried to point out the general contradictions of the capitalist system in which the selective collection is surrounded, the limits and possibilities of the formation processes of human emancipation that contribute to the overcoming of capitalist social relations and the system itself. It was understood that, in the case of recycling cooperatives, labor and freedom are crossed. If they do not have tools to foster the infrastructure, as well as legal protection, laborite and institutional cooperation, these organizations will fail to achieve its purpose: freedom to work and work itself as a form of liberation.