Halfway into a 24-hour worker strike, Brazil’s biggest cities have partially shut down \u2014 with many major thoroughfares clogged and businesses shuttered for the day. The nationwide strike mounted by unions aims to unravel a set of measures supported by President Michel Temer, legislation that would loosen labor laws and roll back pension regulations.<\/p>\n
NPR’s Philip Reeves reports, “As darkness fell, clashes broke out between protestors and riot police in Rio de Janeiro and also Sao Paulo, where a crowd tried to march on Temer’s residence.”<\/p>\n
“It is going to be the biggest strike in the history of Brazil,” Paulo Pereira da Silva, the president of trade union group Forca Sindical, told Reuters<\/a> at the outset of the work stoppage.<\/p>\n And while it’s unclear whether that claim has come true, Philip tells us that the strikers’ efforts did have an obvious effect in Brazil’s streets:<\/p>\n “Public transport’s badly disrupted, especially in Brazil’s largest city S\u00e3o Paulo. Many schools, banks and businesses are closed around the country. And in Rio de Janeiro, there have been skirmishes between protesters, who are blocking roads, and the riot police trying to clear them.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n