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Page context: Home > Transport International Magazine > Issue 8 March 2002 > Working life
Selma, who is now 42 years old, started working for the airline in the early 1980s, in the catering section at Rio airport. Aviation was not something she had been dreaming of all her life, but a salary six times higher excited her, although the idea of eventual night shifts was not very pleasant.
Selma’s routine as catering supervisor was not easy, leaving home each day at 5:30 in the morning and facing a 50 km-long journey on a crowded bus until she arrived at the airport before 8 o’clock. Then she had breakfast with other workers, changed clothes and put on a comfortable pair of shoes. “You need to be at ease when you’re standing all day,” she explains.
Selma was responsible for in-flight catering. She had to check both the quality and the quantity of food supplies, according to the number of people on board and the duration of each flight. If advised of some unexpected passengers, she would rush to the kitchen to get extra trays or enter the cold store for more food. Hot food, cold food, fruits, bakery, patisserie, beverages… only when everything was properly set could she move on to the next aircraft. By the end of the day, Selma had catered for almost 50 flights. “It is very stressful, but the best part is being with your co-workers,” she remembers.
Now a union official, she misses the daily life with her colleagues and the fun they had together. Selma regrets not being closer to the grassroots. “That’s a major problem of trade unionism,” she states. “The leaders need to be more in touch with workers’ problems.”
She is so sure of this that she has incorporated weekly visits to her colleagues as part of her routine, including night shifts every fortnight. It still takes her two hours to get to the airport, where she spends the morning and lunchtime talking to workers about their concerns. Indeed, talking is not a problem to Selma. At her section in Varig, she used to advise other women about subjects such as gender discrimination, sex and health. “Besides the fight for salaries, a unionist must be aware of other topics. I broke some taboos in Varig. Some female colleagues would tell me they had never been to a gynaecologist simply because they were shy of doctors.”
Selma considers herself to be very successful as an activist. As a result of her 17 years working in the company, employees in her department were known to be quite conscious of their rights. It is perhaps no surprise that Selma was fired from her previous job at an international snack-bar chain, for facing up to an employer who made women sign a document promising not to get pregnant.
Today, as president of the union, the question of gender is still important to Selma. In the afternoon, when she is back in the office, it is one of the subjects she discusses in endless meetings with other unions or while negotiating with the employer. One of her major victories is the right to 180 days’ maternity leave. Her next big challenge is a wage increase for the security staff, whose role has become even more important after 11 September. If it happens that a meeting is held outside Rio de Janeiro, she tries to send a representative so as to avoid flying. Ever since her childhood, Selma has been afraid of flying.
As a release from all this stressful work, Selma likes to go window-shopping and pick up her nephew to have a play with him. Selma says that her life, working at the airport and as a union militant, didn’t give her much time to build a family.
Soon Selma will have to change this tight schedule to fit in college classes, which she plans to go back to. Once she started to study nutrition, but she had to quit due to work shift difficulties. But now her choice is different, social work: “I think it has more to do with my mission in the union,” she justifies.
Selma Balbino is definitely a brave woman. “I am not afraid,” she told a brother who advised her about the risks of leafleting against the “government’s representative” who ruled the union during the 20-year dictatorship that Brazil went through. Those were historical days to her.
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Issue 8 March 2002
Other pages for Issue 8 March 2002:
A check on security | Cruise industry shake-up | Scandal of cheap security firms | Ships, secrecy and terrorism | Civil aviation - it's time to get smart | ITF unions campaign for women's basic rights | Not for sale - focus on railway restructuring | Trade union rights | Stamp out union-busting in all ports | ITF Congress 2002: Vancouver here we come | Interview: Carla Winkler | People and obituaries
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