Work and autonomy. Construction of the possible among the recycling workers, men and women, of the Rubem Berta Ecological Association at the city of Porto Alegre (RS)

Abstract

In this article we take into account a reflection from our experiences with workers of Rubem Berta recycling unit, in the periphery of the city of Porto Alegre. Our argument is interlaced with the connections that we have with the subject of Popular Education. This area of the knowledge, throughout the last 40 years in Brazil, produced one of the richest and complex challenges in the scientific aspect as well as in the one of the interventions, no matter if these actions were deriving from the civil society or from the State sphere. We argue about some of the apprenticeships that occurred, in the concrete work of men and women from the world of popular economy, in its associative form. These activities are related to the place where solid residues, from urban, domestic and dry origins are processed and recycled, after being collected by local Municipality. Although the material profits of this economic activity did not yet result in fair payment to the workers, there is a energized connection between theory and practice, which reflects the action that occurs in this time-space, producing results in the field of social interventions, research methodologies, and analytical categories.

Key words: popular education, recycling, pedagogy of the work, solidarity economy, human being formation.