Práticas informacionais na organização político-sindical dos professores da rede municipal de Belo Horizonte

Abstract

The dissertation presents the informational practices of the teachers from the public schools at Belo Horizonte (MG) during their daily struggles. The contemporary world is analyzed and the so called "Information Society" is considered a stage of capitalism in which new labor processes and new information and communication technologies are used to increase production and profitability of companies. In this context, the management of the public education also adopts the principles of flexible management, extension of the working day,multifuncionality of teaching, and lowering the wages in order to universalize education without significantly increasing the investment. The new form of the world of work also impacts on the organizations of unions, weakening them, dispelling workers and creating bureaucracy in these institutions. In this scenario, the teachers from the public schools at Belo Horizonte (MG) created the SindRede/BH, an autonomous form of organization to face the bureaucracy and the lack of combativeness of SindUTE/MG directors. However, the phenomenon of bureaucracy is intrinsic to contemporary union structures and the union leadership must establish ways to control themselves. The research was motivated by reflections about the way teachers produce, disseminate and appropriate of information for the political organization of unions, and it takes account of the teachers positions as unionized, non-unionized, union militant and union leader. Fourteen teachers were chosen to participate in semi-structured interviews. Pierre Bourdieu's theoretical and methodological framework was adopted to analyze the speeches. The study of informational practices is based on the dialectics of individual subjective appropriations, which are conformed by the social structure,without ignoring historicity, totality and the conflicts of the social relations. The research intends to expand the theoretical and methodological framework adopted by the field of information user studies. It concludes that the position occupied by the individual conforms their informational practices. The union directors concentrated more information than the teachers due to the weakening of the organization at the workplace and due to the bureaucracy of the union structure. The lack of time to debate at school prevents the creating of new information that could modify the directions of the union leadership. The communication between the union leadership and its base depends on the mediation of the representative of school. The representative can act as an agent that facilitates the debate in school, if he is not only a union informant.