Brazil’s labor reform becomes effective on November 11. What will change?

The government argues that the labor reform is necessary to update Brazil’s ancient labor laws with modern negotiation practices and to help fight unemployment. Meanwhile, labor groups fear the reform will remove their recourse to basic workers’ rights and risk worsening unemployment, which already affects over 13 million Brazilians.

To make things easier, we’ve broken down the big changes to come with the new labor code: 

Collective Agreements and Labor Conventions

One of the core points brought by the reform is legal legitimacy to contracts signed through collective bargaining. The reform actually gives collective contracts greater legal weight than the current book of labor laws.

However, there are exceptions. The Brazilian Constitution protects some “essential rights,” which include: minimum wages; higher pay for night work; paid weekly rest; and paid extra time at rates at least 50 percent higher than regular work hours. Also untouched by the reform are the number of vacation days per year; safety-related issues; maternity leave of 120 days; and advance notice proportional to the length of service.

That debunks a widely spread interpretation that collective agreements would be, by definition, detrimental to workers. The new legislation offers more freedom for parties to agree on specific working conditions.

Home office

For the first time in history, home offices will be regulated in Brazil. Per the new legislation, there must be a balance between productivity for the company and respect for the workers’ quality of life. The reform says that home office allows workers to balance their professional and personal lives, while reducing company costs.

The reform states that the specifics, including compensation for equipment usage or power and Internet expenses, must be addressed in the work contract.

Intermittent work

This is one of the reform’s most controversial points. It allows companies to hire people for small periods and pay them by either the hour or the day of work. The amount paid by the hour...