https://journals.scientia.international/SIJHuman

Scientia International Journal for

Human Sciences

Vol. 1, 1 (2026)

Type: Research Article | DOI: 10.56365/mk9zvc84

Open access article under CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0).

SINASEFE and the resistance against the neoliberal agenda:

building alternatives for vocational education

Rodrigo da Costa Lima

Instituto Federal de Santa Catarina, Araranguá, Brasil

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9687-9600

rodrigo.lima@ifsc.edu.br

João Henrique Zanelatto

Universidade do Extremo Sul Catarinense, Criciúma, Brasil,

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1754-1001

jhz@unesc.nrt

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze how the National Union of Federal Employees in Basic and Vocational Education (SINASEFE)

resisted and organized the union struggle against the neoliberal educational policies implemented by the governments of Michel

Temer and Jair Bolsonaro. And how, through this resistance, it spearheaded the resumption of debates on policies for vocational

education, which resulted in the document titled “SINASEFE’s Contributions to the Development of Public Policies for Brazilian

Vocational and Technological Education,” drafted and published in 2023, already under the third administration of Luiz Inácio

Lula da Silva. To this end, a qualitative study was conducted, utilizing documentary research based on campaigns and key

documents produced between 2016 and 2022, made available by the union on its official website.

Keywords: Resistance. Vocational Education. Neoliberalism.

Article details | Open peer review

Edited by:

Michel Goulart da Silva

Reviewed by:

Andreza Lorena Santos Cerqueira

Ricardo Scopel Velho

Citation:

Lima, R. C., & Zanelatto, J. H. (2026). SINASEFE and resistance against the

neoliberal agenda: building alternatives for vocational education. Scientia

International Journal for Human Sciences, 1(1).

https://doi.org/10.56365/mk9zvc84

Article history

Received: 09/02/2026

Reviewed: 10/03/2026

Accepted: 14/03/2026

Available: 14/03/2026

Scientia International Journal of Human Sciences 2 of 15

1. Introduction

The vocational education reform that took place in Brazil following the 2016 coup occurred within

the context of a new productive restructuring, which combined the process of deindustrialization with the

transition to the use of new information and communication technologies in the productive system,

particularly in the most dynamic industries. In platform capitalism, labor relations and the worker’s profile

have changed profoundly, demanding different types of competencies and skills, among which socio-

emotional and digital skills have gained prominence.

The combination of these elements, driven by the influence of business sectors on education, has

advanced changes to the high school curriculum in response to capital’s new demands regarding workforce

preparation, within the framework of a society of dependent capitalism. Precarization, platformization, and

the demand for even greater flexibility and adaptability were reflected in the authoritarian educational

project, which reduced students’ access to a range of scientific knowledge in basic general education,

leading to increased educational inequalities.

Vocational training was designed for a world of work with fewer labor rights, a situation that affects

both students and teachers, who expressed their dissatisfaction and took a stand against the New High

School

. Even in such an adverse scenario of a neoliberal offensive, forms of resistance emerged that

challenged the flexible, content-deprived education model, which was countered by a perspective of

integrated education—a proposal rooted in the historical experience of the working class and its

formulations regarding the direction of vocational education.

This article aims to analyze the main acts of resistance by SINASEFE against neoliberal reforms in

vocational education between 2016 and 2024. The qualitative research employs documentary analysis,

drawing on legislation related to the NEM and the BNCC, as well as documents available on the union’s

official website that were produced during the aforementioned period.

The New High School System (NEM) was one of the first reforms implemented during Michel Temer’s administration, via

Provisional Measure 746 of 2016. This process resulted in an amendment to the Law on Guidelines and Foundations of National

Education (LDBEN) with the enactment of Law 13,415 of 2017, which established curricular flexibility organized around the

National Common Core Curriculum (BNCC). This process culminated in a curriculum with a minimum annual workload of

3,000 hours, comprising 1,800 hours for BNCC content and 1,200 hours dedicated to educational pathways, distributed across

five major areas: a) Natural Sciences and their Technologies; b) Languages and their Technologies; c) Applied Humanities and

Social Sciences; d) Mathematics and its Technologies; and e) Technical and Vocational Education. The Law also provided for

the creation of Integrated Educational Pathways, which may combine two or more areas of knowledge and/or Technical and

Vocational Education. (BRAZIL, 2017). Secondary education underwent a new reform during the second year of the Lula

administration. In August 2024, Law 14.945/2024 was enacted, with its most significant changes being the expansion of the

general basic education curriculum to 2,400 hours.

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The article is divided into three sections, in addition to this introduction and the concluding

remarks. The first section seeks to discuss the categories of hegemony and resistance based on Gramsci’s

framework. The second section examines how neoliberal reforms were implemented in Brazil in the post-

coup scenario of 2016. The third and final section addresses forms of union resistance and SINASEFE’s

strategies in the face of the neoliberal offensive.

2. Hegemony and Resistance

For the theoretical analysis of the research subject, it is important to examine the concept of

hegemony as a key category in Gramscian thought, which can assist us in reflecting on current changes in

the field of professional education. Gramsci applied the historical-dialectical method to his analysis of

Taylorism-Fordism, using the concept of hegemony as a fundamental category for understanding the

transformations in the process of accumulation and its relations with the fields of culture and education. By

updating the author’s contribution, we seek to contribute to a reflection on the relations of reproduction of

hegemony in education in the era of Industry 4.0 and changes in the profile of the worker.

In his time, the Sardinian thinker examined the transformation of capitalism and its influences on

education in the early 20th century, analyzing the Taylorist-Fordist system within the context of the Second

Industrial Revolution. At that stage of global capitalist development, in its monopolistic phase, he identified

that the most dynamic and modern axis of industrial production had shifted from European countries to the

United States. For him, the hegemony of the United States and Americanism, which asserted itself in the

interwar period, revealed a new form of organization of labor, industrial production, and social consent

regarding capitalism (Braga, 2008).

The model of accumulation analyzed by Gramsci (2008) expressed a way of life that emerged from

a productive sphere influenced by Taylorism—in terms of work management and organization—and by

Fordism, as a driver of production and capitalist accumulation. This model encompassed much more than

the productive sphere, extending to politics, culture, ideology, and education, creating a mode of social

regulation that encompassed the entire dynamics of working-class life, including the organization and

provision of vocational education.

The author saw in the Taylorist-Fordist model of production a transition from what he termed “old

economic individualism” to a programmatic economy, in which state planning became a guiding principle.

Rationalization took center stage based on the American model— —implying the creation of a new type of

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human being, in accordance with “the new type of work and the productive process” (Gramsci, 2008, p.

41).

The need for the rationalization of production and labor, at that stage of capitalist accumulation,

demanded new methods for the imposition of industry. Americanism began to implement a new model of

coercion and discipline linked to the ways workers thought, felt, and lived. Forms of rationalization and

prohibitionism (linked to moral codes and a puritanical ideology, which strongly mark American society)

were combined, causing the model to shape a new working class:

of the American phenomenon, which is also the greatest collective effort undertaken

to date to create, with extraordinary speed and a sense of purpose never before seen

in history, a new type of worker and of man (Gramsci, 2008, p. 66).

The new dialectic of Taylorism-Fordism produced a contradiction in the formation of the working

class, for while tasks were established in a repetitive manner—increasingly rationalized, mechanized, and

internalized by workers as automatic gestures—it ultimately liberated workers’ thought and reflection on

their own daily practices in the factories.

Unlike the trained gorilla envisioned by Taylor, the worker did not lose his humanity, and by

repeating gestures, he freed his mind to seek new, nonconformist horizons. This situation was recognized

by the industrialists of the period, leading to a series of educational initiatives and projects aimed at

disciplining workers and their professional training.

Currently, with the transformations brought about by Industry 4.0, a new pattern of capitalist

accumulation has emerged, driven by the growth of new information and communication technologies,

which have increased productivity while simultaneously intensifying the replacement of living labor with

dead labor, establishing a new level of labor exploitation. Under the dominance of finance capital,

capitalism has reorganized its hegemony in the 21st century through new forms of organization of material

production and social relations, with repercussions on international relations, culture, the organization of

labor, and education, in which schools fulfill the role of reproducing bourgeois hegemony.

The implementation of the new vocational training project in Brazil stemmed primarily from the

private hegemonic apparatus of the ruling classes (Fontes, 2010), with institutions linked to the industrial

bourgeoisie serving as its main promoters, notably the National Confederation of Industry (CNI) and the

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state-level Industrial Federations ( ), which rely on the S System

as the primary disseminator of the project

to update vocational training, based on the competencies required by Industry 4.0. They envision a new

type of worker for a new work process, one that involves significant changes compared to the Taylorist-

Fordist model studied by Gramsci and the Toyotist model that emerged later, beginning in 1970.

As identified in the vocational education projects recently implemented in Brazil, the shaping and

disciplining of the working class according to the principles of Industry 4.0 occur from the perspective of

entrepreneurship, digital and socio-emotional competencies, and flexibility in the face of changes in the

socio-technical division of labor. Although this occurs in a faltering, partial, and contradictory manner

within the context of Brazilian dependent capitalism, it is evident that these perspectives permeate courses

and curricula, albeit at different paces.

We are facing a form of neo-Americanism, as an update of workers’ subordination to new social

ways of acting, feeling, and producing, with implications for their social reproduction and adapting them to

the current moment of class domination. If in the 1920s and 1930s Michigan was the symbolic center of the

hegemonic Taylorist-Fordist model of labor organization, in the 2010s and 2020s this role has shifted to

California and the model of platform capitalism emanating from large global technology corporations.

But the education that expresses the reproduction of hegemony also generates the possibility of

overcoming it. Gramsci analyzed the organization of culture and the school based on the organic unity

between the production of material life and spiritual life. His theory, linked to the revolutionary project, did

not lose sight of the perspective of class struggle nor the relations of domination and resistance existing

under capitalism.

Therefore, in his analysis of social conflicts, he understood the state not merely as a legal

institution, but as the result of the organic relations between political and civil society, since social conflict

is also reflected in civil society. He identified that one of the problems of bourgeois education was the

separation between intellectual education and manual labor. In the Italian context of the 1920s, this duality

in education was deepened by the reforms of the fascist regime, aimed at organizing two educational

systems: one for the intellectual elite and another for the working class. Thus, a “disengaged” school was

created, serving a small elite with no preparation for vocational training ( , and another “formative” school,

The S System is a group of nine service-providing institutions that are independently administered by business federations and

confederations linked to the main sectors of the economy. Its origins date back to the Getúlio Vargas administration, with the

creation of Senai in 1942, aimed at training workers for the industrialization project of the Estado Novo. These are private-law

entities that perform functions of public interest. The S System comprises: Senai (National Industrial Apprenticeship Service),

Sesi (Industry Social Service), Senac (National Commercial Apprenticeship Service), Sesc (Commerce Social Service), Senar

(National Rural Apprenticeship Service), Senat (National Transportation Apprenticeship Service), SEST (Social Service for

Transportation), SESCOOP (National Cooperative Learning Service), and SEBRAE (Brazilian Micro and Small Business

Support Service) (Lisboa, 2020).

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aimed at preparing students for specialized work, in which the student’s fate was predetermined (Gramsci,

1982).

Inspired by the Soviet educational experience, Gramsci (1982) pointed out, as a counterpoint to the

dual model, the need to build a unitary school that would balance the development of manual labor skills

with an education that would enhance students’ intellectual capacities—a vision linked to the revolutionary

project of the emancipation of labor and a state capable of managing the transition to a society of freely

associated workers (Del Roio, 2018). Civil society presents itself as the primary arena of class struggle, of

the maintenance of the hegemony of the ruling classes, and of its contestation. For Gramsci (1982), civil

society is not something homogeneous, amorphous, and inferior, but rather a space of conflict, of

permanent disputes among social classes for control of hegemony in modern capitalist societies.

The state is taken as an expression of the conflicts and the correlation of forces existing in society,

in relation to the interests of social classes and their factions, without separating it or placing it above the

country’s social, economic, and political life, but as a dialectical relationship between political power—the

state in the strict sense—and the class relations existing in civil society, in the struggle for hegemony. This

leads to the notion of the expanded state, formulated by Antonio Gramsci, as “[...] the entire complex of

practical and theoretical activities through which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its rule,

but also manages to obtain the active consent of the governed” (Gramsci, 2007, p. 331).

State power operates within what Poulantzas (2000) defined as an institution situated directly within

the relations of production and the social division of labor inherent in capitalism, which allows us to situate

the state within the broader field of struggles. This element of the author’s theory is an important

foundation for theoretical reflections on the categories of analysis, since the state, based on a relative

separation from the economy, acts in contemporary capitalism as the organizer of education in general and

vocational education in particular. The transformations and reforms proposed by the state articulate changes

in capitalist relations of production and in the class struggle.

The organization of education in capitalist society also proceeds from the principle of “the

legitimization of the practices of the state and its agents as bearers of a particular knowledge, of an intrinsic

rationality” (Poulantzas, 2000, p. 55). For the Greek theorist, the character of the capitalist state originates

in the autonomy of economic power and political power, between the political struggle and the economic

struggle. In this form of state, led by the ruling class, its political interests are represented, but not directly

its economic interests. This allows for a certain degree of maneuvering and disputes within its own

structures, which guarantees some economic interests of the dominated classes, always within the limits of

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the system— , without jeopardizing the order—provided they are compatible with the hegemonic

domination of the ruling classes.

Therefore, the class struggle in capitalist society results in the possibility that the dominated classes

may have some of their interests met, placing certain limits on the ruling class, in which the state is

pressured “[...] by the political and economic struggle of the dominated classes; however, this simply

means that the state is not an instrument of classes, but rather the state of a society divided into classes”

(Poulantzas, 2019, p. 194).

This theoretical contribution regarding the capitalist state and its potential to respond, under the

pressure and struggle of the dominated classes, certain political and economic demands and requirements,

allows us to understand how educational policies are organized in the country, particularly in the area of

secondary-level technical and vocational education, which, as analyzed since the first chapter, is an

expression of the struggles between class interests, which have historically shifted in different historical

contexts.

This is the very basis for the analysis of the influences of secondary education reform, of new

conceptions of worker training from the perspective of Industry 4.0, and of resistance to such projects, in

which Brazilian education has been hegemonicly guided by neoliberal policies, against which alternatives

proposed by the working class are emerging.

In the Brazilian case, neoliberal educational policies became hegemonic in the 1990s, consolidating

through coercive measures by the State, but also through a broad movement of a “complex process of

hegemony-building” (Gentilli, 1996), which transformed neoliberal ideology into the primary framework

for the formulation of educational policies, in direct relation to the productive restructuring, mass

unemployment, privatization of public services, reduction of the public budget, and the implementation of

educational reforms subordinated to international financial agencies that marked that decade.

The use of neoliberal public policies to reform education may at first seem contradictory, given that

the organization of the education sector by the state under neoliberalism aims to reduce government

involvement. However, upon systematic analysis, it becomes clear that, in order to carry out its agenda, the

state plays a central role in the formulation and implementation of neoliberal educational policies, based on

the interests of the ruling class (Leher; Motta, 2012).

The transition to neoliberal hegemony in education after the 1990s was based on at least two

structural characteristics that have historically permeated the educational field in the country. According to

Saviani (2008), the first concerns the resistance of the political and economic ruling elites to the state’s

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maintenance of public education, which is reflected in the chronic shortage of resources for the sector, and

the second refers to the discontinuity of educational policies, marked by a series of reforms that promise

innovative solutions, periodically presenting the educational system with new plans and goals that

completely reorient the system. Added to these two aspects are the social inequalities that have historically

manifested in Brazilian education and that hinder the chances of retention and success for students from the

working class.

However, as a result of the mobilizations and organization of the working class, educational policies

underwent a shift at the beginning of the 21st century. According to Cichaczewski & Castro (2023), during

the PT governments, a new orientation for vocational and technological education was implemented, which

reflected, albeit partially, demands and formulations that originated in the struggles of the Brazilian

working class, which emerged in the context of the struggles for the country’s redemocratization beginning

in the 1970s, and in the reorganization of the class in the 1980s and 1990s.

Decree 5.104/2004 and the creation of the Federal Institutes (IFs) were the main expressions of an

educational policy that reinforced high school education integrated with vocational education, as a model of

professional training that contrasts with the previous logic, challenging the duality of education and an

education subsumed to the market. Even within the contradictions of the class-conciliation governments

and the popular-democratic project led by the PT, the IFs represented “[...] an educational experiment

deeply rooted in the recent tradition of struggles by the Brazilian working class, which would not exist

without it” (Cichaczewski & Castro, 2023, p. 465).

With the crisis of Lulism and the advent of the 2016 coup, educational reforms, particularly in

secondary education, began to directly serve the interests of the ruling classes, without mediation. The

vocational education envisioned by capital was revived as a hegemonic project, centered on the division

between intellectual and manual labor, between knowing and doing, grounded in the principles of

unilateralism, instrumentalization, alienation, and the reification of the school, which serve the perspectives

of a narrow education fully subsumed under the forms of capitalist sociability (Antunes & Pinto, 2017).

A project associated with the school of capital, which Meszáros (2007) understands not only fulfills

the purpose of providing the knowledge and labor force necessary for the expansion of the capitalist

system, but also serves to produce and transmit a series of values that legitimize dominant c n interests,

which seek to impose an order that advocates the idea that there are no alternatives, establishing structural

domination and hierarchical subordination.

As an illustration of educational inequalities, we can cite data from the Brazilian Yearbook of Basic Education, published in

2025, which revealed that among high school students, 16.3% of the wealthiest 20% demonstrated adequate learning outcomes,

while among the poorest 20%, the figure was only 2.4%. (Basílio, 2025).

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During the second half of the 2010s, secondary education underwent a significant reform process in

Brazil. This led to changes that involved amendments to the Law on Guidelines and Bases for National

Education (LDBEN) and curricular transformations in the final stage of basic education. In scope, the NEM

and the National Common Core Curriculum (BNCC) also had repercussions on secondary-level vocational

and technical education in the country, one of the educational pathways offered to students.

The changes in Brazilian secondary education occurred within the context of a set of neoliberal

reforms, which advanced rapidly after the 2016 coup, through the implementation of the agenda proposed

in the document “A Bridge to the Future,” drafted by the Ulysses Guimarães Foundation, an institution

linked to the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB).

The program served the interests of dominant sectors and major business leaders, and served as the

basis for the policies of the governments of Michel Temer (2016–2018) and Jair Bolsonaro (2019–2022).

The advent of the NEM and the BNCC occurred in tandem with labor reform (Law 13,467/2017), the

spending cap (Constitutional Amendment 95/2016), outsourcing for core activities (Law 13,429/2017) and

pension reform (Constitutional Amendment 103/2019), which were part of a broad effort by factions of the

ruling class to establish new forms of labor regulation through the removal of labor and social rights.

During the administration of Jair Bolsonaro, public policies focused on vocational education were

implemented, such as the development of the New Pathways Program, the new National Catalog of

Technical Courses (CNCT), and the new National Curriculum Guidelines for Vocational and Technological

Education (DCNEPT).

This occurred in parallel with the transformations brought about by Industry 4.0, in which a new

pattern of capitalist accumulation emerged, driven by the rise of new information and communication

technologies. These technologies increased labor productivity while simultaneously intensifying the

replacement of living labor with dead labor, establishing a new level of labor exploitation. Under the

hegemony of finance capital, capitalism reorganized itself in the 21st century through new forms of

material production and social relations, with repercussions on international relations, culture, the

organization of labor, and education, in which the school fulfills the role of reproducing bourgeois

hegemony.

But the education that expresses the reproduction of hegemony also generates the possibility of

overcoming it. Gramsci (1982) analyzed the organization of culture and the school based on the organic

unity between the production of material life and spiritual life. His theory, linked to the revolutionary

project, did not lose sight of the perspective of class struggle and the relations of domination and resistance

existing within capitalism. Therefore, in his analysis of social conflicts, he understood the state not merely

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as a legal institution, but as the result of the organic relations between political and civil society, since

social conflict is also reflected in civil society.

3. Trade Union Resistance

But even in the face of an overwhelming neoliberal offensive and its effects on vocational

education, it is possible to conceive of the implementation of reforms through the lens of resistance—as a

counterpoint to the dictates of capital—via the organization and actions of the working class, which has its

own visions for alternative forms of education, work organization, and social relations, beyond the realm of

capital.

Sociologist James Woodcock (2023), in analyzing the organization and mobilization of the working

class in the current context of platform capitalism, conceptualizes resistance comprehensively through the

following definition:

Resistance can refer to people who oppose change, the refusal to accept or comply,

a revolt against an oppressive force, protection against something, or even

relationships between material things involving friction or electric current. These

comparisons can help illustrate how resistance at work exists in various forms and

intensities. Just as with an electric current, in practice we find that resistance is

always present (Woodcock, 2023, p. 427).

Whether in traditional or platform-based work relationships, in industries or schools, in rural or

urban settings, the question that must be asked is not whether resistance exists, for it is always present

among workers from the moment labor exploitation begins. The question is the intensity and strength they

are able to bring to their movements against capital.

In this sense, Hodson’s (1995) contribution helps us think about resistance in broader terms, by

taking into account individual and collective actions—even by a small group of workers—aimed at

advancing their demands before management or at reducing the effects of certain demands placed upon

them in the workplace. This is associated with traditional forms of resistance, of which the strike remains

the greatest expression of struggle.

In the resistance and organization of federal education workers, the National Union of Federal Basic

and Vocational Education Workers (SINASEFE), founded in November 1988, , plays a key role as the

primary representative body for teachers and technical-administrative staff within the Federal Network of

Vocational, Scientific, and Technological Education. In the context analyzed, the union sought to act

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against the advance of the neoliberal agenda, in addition to building an alternative proposal aligned with the

demands of the working class.

The Federal Network currently comprises 656 educational institutions, present in all states and the

Federal District. It offers nearly 13,000 vocational courses, with over 1,681,363 students enrolled.

represents a base of education workers comprising a total of 83,494 employees, including 47,990 teachers

and approximately 43,266 technical and administrative staff (BRASIL, 2024). SINASEFE has 28,555

members nationwide and 94 local chapters, which serve as the organization’s grassroots units; each chapter

possesses political, administrative, economic, financial, and property autonomy, as well as its own

leadership.

Among the resistance actions carried out by the union following the 2016 coup, the campaign in

defense of the federal network, launched on June 8, 2018, stands out. It is based on five major mobilizing

pillars: a) against budget cuts and Constitutional Amendment 95/2016; b) combating workplace bullying; c)

against the dismantling of public education: down with the “School Without a Party” policy, for the repeal

of the High School Reform, and against the proposed National Common Core Curriculum (BNCC); d) for

the autonomy of the public school system; and e) against the reorganization.

SINASEFE also organized national strikes in December 2016, a movement driven by student

occupations that rose up against the high school reform and the Temer government’s spending cap; in 2017,

with participation in the general strikes of April 28, June 30, and December 5; between 2020 and 2021,

with the holding of healthcare strikes against the resumption of in-person classes amid the Covid-19

pandemic; in 2022, the strike took place between May and July, with the agenda focusing on wage

adjustments and opposition to Jair Bolsonaro’s neo-fascist policies. The most recent strike organized by

SINASEFE took place between April and June 2024, during the Lula administration, with salary increases

and career restructuring as its central demands.

In order to strengthen the debate and advocacy for integrated secondary education, in November

2023, the national SINASEFE approved the document titled “SINASEFE’s Contributions to the

Development of Public Policies for Brazilian Vocational and Technological Education” (SINASEFE,

2024), which was published in 2024.

The result of a debate with the rank-and-file education workers in the network, it was approved at

the 35th National Congress of SINASEFE (CONSINASEFE) as an expression of collective reflection on

the 15 years of the Federal Network for Professional, Scientific, and Technological Education (RFEPCT),

The organization is affiliated with the Confederation of American Educators (CEA) and is not linked to any labor union

federation, having disaffiliated from the Central Sindical e Popular Conlutas in 2019.

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publicizing the union’s educational project . This demonstrates the union movement’s capacity to develop

pedagogical and political alternatives for the working class’s vocational education in times of neoliberal

offensive.

The document outlines proposals across 12 key areas that guide debates on educational policies,

namely: a) Integrated Secondary Education; b) Initial and continuing training for teachers in Professional

and Technological Education; c) Youth and Adult Education; d) Democratic management; e) The role of

extension programs in consolidating the identity of the Federal Network for Professional, Scientific, and

Technological Education; f) Funding; g) Student Assistance Policy; h) Inclusive education and diversity; i)

Expansion of the RFEPCT; j) Education in institutions of the Ministry of Defense; k) Access, retention, and

success.

Among the proposals, the integrated education project stands out; it is defined as a curricular

organization that takes into account the dimensions of work, science, and culture, taking work as an

educational principle. Advocating for the proposal of a unified elementary school and the transition to a

polytechnic school, in opposition to the hegemonic technicality and pragmatism in the NEM project,

SINASEFE points toward a project that broadens access to scientific knowledge, in addition to proposing a

critical analysis of society, signaling a project of emancipatory education for Brazil’s working-class youth.

4. Final Considerations

We have identified that the new high school project was imposed in an authoritarian manner, and in

full alignment with the neoliberal policies implemented in Brazil after 2016. It reflected in education the

precariousness of labor and the reduction of labor and social rights, which are intertwined in Brazilian

dependent capitalism with the modernization of some of the economy’s more dynamic sectors, in relation

to the intensification of productivity through technological advancement.

The reform was linked to issues such as the overexploitation of labor (which manifests itself in the

impoverishment of the curriculum for working-class children), social inequalities, and the reframing of

structural duality (by restricting access to important scientific knowledge in high school, as reflected in the

BNCC and educational pathways), as well as a slow and faltering adaptation to Industry 4.0 technologies,

characteristic of a dependent economy.

The set of transformations in educational policies in the area of vocational education implemented

after 2016 culminated in a technical and vocational training pathway for the NEM, marked by business- y

influence, which was expressed in the BNCC, the new DCNEPT, and the reformulation of the CNCT,

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combined with the New Pathways Program created by the MEC during the Bolsonaro administration. This

signaled a shift away from the principles of vocational training, combining curricular flexibility with the

stripping of scientific content from the high school curriculum, thereby reinforcing neoliberal policies in

public education.

Even in an extremely adverse context, SINASEFE organized various defensive actions, including

diverse mobilizations, centered on defending the federal school system and the rights of education workers.

It was observed that SINASEFE played a central role in defending public education and the careers of

teachers and educational administrative staff, in addition to formulating an educational project committed

to the interests of the working class.

The successive strikes and mobilizations organized by the union between 2016 and 2024 express

not only the struggle for labor rights, such as wage adjustments and career restructuring, but also a broader

political resistance against the regressive educational reforms, austerity policies, and the neoliberal agenda

that marked the period. In this sense, SINASEFE’s actions linked the demands of education workers to a

structural agenda for the defense of public and democratic education, from the perspective of the

polytechnic school.

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