Brazilian Workers' Confederation

Brazilian Workers' Confederation

Confederação Operária Brasileira
Seal of the Brazilian Workers' Confederation
Abbreviation	COB
Formation	March 1908; 116 years ago (1908-03)
Dissolved	c. 1915; 109 years ago (1915)
Type	Trade union federation
Headquarters	rua do Hospício nº 144, Rio de Janeiro
Location	Brazil
Main organ	A Voz do Trabalhador

The Brazilian Workers' Confederation (Portuguese: Confederação Operária Brasileira, COB) was the first national trade union center in Brazil, founded in 1908, under the basis of agreement of the First Brazilian Workers' Congress of 1906. Through its newspaper, A Voz do Trabalhador, it allowed a certain coordination and exchange of information within the Brazilian worker movement at the national level.^[1] The COB was formed by national industry and craft federations, local and state unions, unions isolated in places where there were no federations and non-federated industries.^[2]

During the first years of existence, the COB brought together about 50 unions, especially those organized in the Workers' Federation of Rio de Janeiro (FORJ), in the Workers' Federation of São Paulo (FOSP) and the Workers' Federation of Rio Grande do Sul (FORGS), which were the main support bases of the Confederation, and also those organized in the Bahia Socialist Federation (FSB), in the Local Workers' Federation of Santos (FOLTS), among others.^[2]

COB members considered that it should defend the fundamental aspirations of the working class, without distinction of school or party, so that any member of an organization, whether they be social-democratic, socialist, anarchist or another tendency, could accept it entirely. It was considered that the condition for the success of the union was in its autonomy, which would guarantee the suppression of conflicts between the different political trends between the workers.^[3]