BAGGERS

The large number of warehouses and movement of coffee at Santos demanded a high number of workers for the handling of bags. They acted in receiving coffee in train cars that came from São Paulo, in many warehouses or unloading wagons or trucks at the gates of Docas, being temporary workers or employees of warehouses.

The unbundled workers together founded the Sindicato dos Operários no Comércio Armazenador, Carregadores e Ensacadores de Café de Santos in 1919. Its organization is similar to the stevedores' union: they are scaled in the "walls" or "points" on a rotating basis, working in groups called ternos, led by a captain. Despite the warehouses of coffee had a group of fixed baggers, demand often required the hiring of temporary workers.

When the coffee arrived at the warehouse in sacks, the baggers would unload the trucks or wagons, pierced the bag at the warehouse’s entrance to take a sample and stacked them inside the warehouse, in separate corridors by batch, sieve or other differential. When they received the order of their customer – for example an exporter - to form certain alloy for export, or after the coffee was reprocessed, the terno of baggers was divided to perform the task.

It was a work of great physical demand and a large number of workers. This has made the introduction of many machines throughout the twentieth century, which decreased the effort of the worker activities such as bagging, internal transportation and reprocessing, and increased productivity. In the 90’s warehouses begin to use the big bags with a capacity of 20 sacks and moved by forklift. Despite the gain in productivity it was responsible for a major decline in the performance of baggers.

Previously, it had much work of hand bagging coffee. There was little machinery, you know, there were a few warehouses with machinery. Hand bagging was in the bowl, I poured the coffee on the hill, hit the paddle. And then I bagged with the bowl, there was o boca de sapo, I’d put in the balance - that was steelyard and a guy weighed. And the rabelo, we gave the name, pulled the bag and sewed the bag by hand with needle. Then he threw and put on the stack, or boarded. (sic)
Antonio dos Santos Hermitage has worked as a coffee bagger since 1953 and is now retired by Sintrammar. Testimony given to the Museu do Café in 2011.

Back when coffee was not stored in big bags, you had no forklift inside a coffee warehouse. Today, you will see ten forklifts against, let’s say ten forklifts in a warehouse to command an operation that required 50 men. Today, everything is much easier, right? The course of operation inside a coffee warehouse. So, in terms of machinery, today you have: forklift, mechanical tonsils, those little tonsils, I call them dalinhas, why this one? Because when you had a coffee lying on the ground, up to ten high, occupying an area, let's take an example, of 100 square meters, you had to manually lift that bag for put over your colleague’s head, help him put over your head, from there you carried the bag to a place, to your destination, come on. So, this was all done manually. Not today, today you have that little mechanical tonsils, that is a miniature of a huge tonsil which you stack the bags of coffee. So what happens? This small tonsil is used to prevent lifting of the bag for put over the head, because there all is done by one man putting all those sacks there on the little tonsil, and the other grabbing at its head, without making physical effort. Because of this simple equipment, the company wins and also won the man, right? Because the man will have less physical effort and the company will have more productivity. And also, it's good for the worker because he earns by production. The higher productivity, the better, understand? So much easier the life of the bagger, understand? Although, the only thing that really messed with the bagger’s pocket was the storage in big bag, right? Who does it is the forklift, and he does not have full involvement in this production’s gain. Because he does not put his own hand. (sic)
Carlos Roberto Fernandes de Lima has been a bagger since the 1980s and is currently the Director of Sintrammar. Testimony given to the Museu do Café in 2012.

The eviction, for example, dumping coffee: what is a dump of coffee? The coffee bag, or it is stored internally in a warehouse, it is taken from that warehouse pile by the workers themselves, right? That there are. They carry the bag from that location to the hopper, to pour that coffee there to be reprocessed within coffee warehouse’s operations. This is the dump of coffee.

There is also the output of coffee from the machine, what does that mean? The output of coffee from the machine or it goes to be stored in the warehouse itself, or it will be loaded to go off, or in a container, or load it on a truck or any vehicle. So, this is the routine. You take it from the machine and carry it to the machinery, so that it can be loaded on the vehicle, or it is stored in the warehouse itself. This is one of the activities. There is others, like discharge: discharging coffee, they come in their own vehicles, right, outside, or within the city itself and it will be unloaded at the warehouse for that routine handling. In other hands either it is reprocessed or it will be stored etc. (sic)
Carlos Roberto Fernandes de Lima has been a bagger since the 1980s and is currently the Director of Sintrammar. Testimony given to the Museu do Café in 2012.

What is the coffee bagger - or the bag carrier? He will carry coffee bags with 60 kg and he has several activities in a coffee warehouse. So he not only carries bag inside a terminable area, i.e. within a salon. He has his various functions: unloading trucks, loading trucks. Functions as, for example, dumping a hopper, internal stacking, sometimes external stacking which happens a lot; so it a number of assignments that a coffee bagger has inside a coffee warehouse, itself, got it? (sic)
Carlos Roberto Fernandes de Lima has been a bagger since the 1980s and is currently the Director of Sintrammar. Testimony given to the Museu do Café in 2012.