Brazil truckers’ strike off to weak start

A strike by Brazil's independent truck drivers got off to a weak start today amid internal divisions over how best to challenge market-based diesel prices set by state-controlled Petrobras.

For weeks, union leaders had been threatening a strike they said would exceed a May 2018 labor action that disrupted food and fuel supplies across Brazil. The 11-day strike ended after the government agreed to impose a temporary diesel price subsidy.

Feeling betrayed by President Jair Bolsonaro who supported them in 2018, a hardline faction of truckers wants to flex its muscle to win new concessions on the diesel price. Others have stood down.

So far, the new strike that was scheduled to start this morning has had a limited impact on Brazil's roads, a transport ministry official tells Argus.

The oil workers´ labor federation (FUP) vowed to protest at Petrobras installations as well, but there has been little or no impact so far.

Bolsonaro extended an olive branch to the truck drivers last week with a pledge to reduce the federal fuel tax PIS/Cofins for diesel. His infrastructure minister Tarcisio Gomes de Freitas said the government remains open to policy discussions with the truckers.

Among the key labor groups unions that pulled back from the strike is national independent truckers' association Abrava, which sought to distance the truckers' cause over diesel prices from mounting congressional calls to impeach Bolsonaro. "We need to fight for our demands, but the movement took a different direction, a political movement, which is why Abrava did not join," Wallace Landim, one of the leaders of the 2018 action, said on social media on 30 January. "There is a movement rising for the impeachment of the president, in favor of the president, against the supreme court, against the governors. This is a burden that the population must carry, not the truckers."

Concerns over possible disruptions in medical supplies needed to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic have also eroded popular support for the strike.

On 29 January, a federal court in Rio de Janeiro granted an injunction prohibiting demonstrations on a coastal highway that traverses the state.

Brazil´s oil regulator ANP says it is monitoring fuel supplies.

By Nathan Walters