The Right to Claim: Children and Youth Workers in Labor Court at the Time of The Civil-Military Dictatorship (Southwestern Bahia, Brazil)

The Labor History, from the 1970s, began to contemplate new themes, such as childhood and youth, and more recently for its development, one made use of the new sources, for instance the lawsuits of Labor Court which have revealed important aspects of the history of workers. Labor lawsuits allow the inventory of data on the child labor, and they reveal the conflicts between minors (current term in the documentation and the laws of the period for ranging the children and adolescents) and their employers in the workplace, and so the extent of these conflicts to the courts. The reports of underage worker about their experiences in the labor market expose abuses and inhumane conditions of survival. However their presence in Labor Justice shows these young workers, more than passive victims, were active subjects of history, and they did not hesitate in recording their daily life, their expectations, and their conflicts with employers in the lawsuits.