Bolsonaro allows civil servants to work exclusively from home

Photo: Anderson Riedel/PR

For months, federal workers have urged the government to raise their salaries (with many asking for 26-percent raises) and have grown disgruntled with President Jair Bolsonaro. In a bid to calm unions down, the president signed a decree on Tuesday authorizing servants to work entirely remotely.

The move comes just two weeks after the same administration ordered all civil servants to return to in-person work.

The new decree, which “focuses on the delivery of results and in the quality of services,” allows workers to perform their duties exclusively from home — and even live abroad — provided they are available for calls (including from the public, if applicable). Performance will be exclusively based on productivity rather than assiduity and punctuality.

Multiple unions have staged strikes or go-slow protests as they believe the government’s proposal of a 5-percent raise is not good enough to meet their needs. Federal workers in Brazil earn, on average, twice what their counterparts in private companies do.

Amanda Audi

Amanda Audi is a journalist specializing in politics and human rights. She is the former executive director of Congresso em Foco and worked as a reporter for The Intercept Brasil, Folha de S. Paulo, O Globo, Gazeta do Povo, Poder360, among others. In 2019, she won the Comunique-se Award for best-written media reporter and won the Mulher Imprensa award for web journalism in 2020