The crisis and challenges faced by labour, including the trade unions and social movements have proportions not yet fully understood. The repercussions, owing to globalisation, also reached Third World countries, especially intermediate countries that hold important industrial estates such as Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, etc. Brazil is part of an economic, social, political and cultural context which has universal traces of global capitalism, but also possesses singularities. During the last decades, Brazilian trade unions and social movements have either followed a different path. There was a widespread and highly significant strike movement (in the 1980s) with a notable expansion of trade unions organising salaried sectors (teachers, bank workers, public sector workers, etc.); there was also the rise of the Union Congresses such as the CUT - Central Unica dos Trabalhadores (Workers Central) and the advance of rural unionism and the Landless Workers' Movement (MST, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra) and new urban social movements such as the Homeless Movements. By the end of that decade, we joined in a more significant way the challenges which were presented to the unionism and social movements. These challenges are discussed in this article. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.324415435