Hegemony in the Permanent Negotiating Table of the Unified Health System: An Analysis Based on Gramsci’s Assumptions

Abstract

The contributions of Gramsci’s political theory are applied to the debate of the contemporary movement of health workers in the context of the Permanent Negotiating Table of the Unified Health System, which was institutionalized as a space for the exercise of democracy in labor relations in the healthcare area. The sources utilized are the Regulation Regime of the National Negotiating Table, Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks and the works of contemporary authors who analyze the writings of this thinker. The paper dialogues with the concept of hegemony, the agents’ understanding of hegemony at the Negotiating Table, unions and parties as social structures and the balance of forces between the government and the workers in the negotiations. We conclude that the Negotiating Table, as a space for labor relations between the government and the working class, is a way of exploring relevant aspects of power relations which, if understood dialectically, open space for advances from a democratic perspective, as Gramsci teaches us.