This article attempts an inventory of the numerous initiatives of the Lula government (2003-2010) with regard to the establishing of human resource policy and, in this regard, seeks to verify if there has been improvement in working conditions and relations in the Brazilian public sector. As of the 1990s and against the grain of the major growth of public employment over the previous six decades, Brazilian government adhesion to the principles of the "Washington Consensus" has made it clear how civil service becomes a crucial issue on the agenda of reforms deemed necessary to recover economic growth. Such governments have tended to deal with public employment as a fiscal problem and have acted in such as way as to restrict it. Simultanteously, work conditions and relations have become more precarious (as evidenced by the absence of inflation adjustments, the increase in variable forms of wages and salaries; increased temporary and subcontracted labor and authoritarian positions regarding labor unions). Through documentary and bibliographic research, we have been able to see that the restructuring of different careers, new employment openings, the creation of a National Board of Permanent Negotiation, social security system reform and selective wage readjustment show that ambiguity is the fundamental trait of human resource policies. This is due to the fact that improvements in civil servants' working conditions have been accompanied by the maintenance of a part of the conservative agenda of the 1990s, particularly that part that has sought to reproduce rigorous fiscal limits.
Public Employment; Labor Conditions; Collective Bargaining
