Entre o ideal e o real: a construção do pensamento empresarial uberlandense e seus projetos educacionais para a formação dos trabalhadores

Abstract

This work aims at analyzing Uberlândia s business thinking development which is represented by the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture of Uberlândia, and its educational projects for workers training. The study was developed with an extensive literature search and a detailed survey of documentary sources. Through analysis of the entity s minutes and articles from local newspapers we could present the political, economic, social and educational projects of Uberlândia s entrepreneurs. Access to documentary sources allowed us to recover the city s economic history, linking the local scene to the development of capitalism in national and international level. Unlike the official discourse of the ideal, rich, and industrialized city, the thesis has found another reality that was ignored because it contradicts the city project, conceived by the local economic elite. Despite the ideological discourse that insisted on asserting the eternal partnership between capital and labor, the historical reality has shown that Uberlândia experienced in the decades 1940 to 1960 many conflicts of classes and, in fact, its economy was noted for its preponderance in agriculture and trade, particularly in the wholesale branch. The Vocational School of Industrial Learning Américo Renê Giannetti was selected as a major educational project led by the Chamber. Our objective in analyzing the school was to understand the participation and the real interests of the entity before the political local and state powers in creating the school in the city. The influences of the national-developmental thinking and the adoption of the IDORT/Taylorist principles of rationalization of the working world were present in the daily life of the Association. Although the desire was to transform Uberlândia into an Industrial City as a reference for the state and country, the thesis showed that the city was different from what was projected and idealized for it.