“Genetic” factors of Companhia União Fabril’s worker’s housing policy in Portugal: a brief analysis

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present a contribution to the understanding of the paternalistic systems of management of labor in the industry, looking at these systems departing from some of their territorial implications, especially in the area of housing. With this scope, the aim here is to establish an interpretive framework for the creation of the housing policy that was in built at Companhia União Fabril, in Portugal, beginning in 1907 with the fixation of the company on the riverside near Lisbon, in the city of Barreiro, and until the political revolution of April 25, 1974, in Portugal. More than to develop here a synthesis of diachronic inclination that covered all this temporal arc, we focused on the elucidation of the traces and factors that, in our opinion, justified this intervention of the employers and led to its success, be it from the point of view of business management or of its attractiveness to workers who accessed the houses made available by the Company. The text begins with a brief analysis of the characteristics of paternalistic patronage in industry, namely explaining its main objectives and characteristics. Next, some historical contextualisation of the subject is provided, identifying specific features of the Company União Fabril case in Barreiro. Finally, it seeks to identify the factors that have been in the genesis and, later, in the maintenance of the employer’s intervention housing for workers in Companhia União Fabril. The data presented here were collected through documentary research and interviews, in a fieldwork of twelve months.