Temer's reform excludes 55% of workers.
Michel Temer's labor reform, sent to Congress at the end of December, leaves more than half of the country's formal employees and 99,3% of companies without workplace representation; the rule establishing the prevalence of negotiated agreements over legislation stipulates the election of a company representative only in companies with more than 200 employees; of the 48 million Brazilians with formal employment contracts, 55,2% work in companies with up to 199 employees, according to the Annual Social Information Report.
247 - Michel Temer's labor reform, sent to Congress at the end of December, leaves more than half of the country's formal employees and 99,3% of companies without workplace representation. The rule establishing the prevalence of negotiated agreements over legislation stipulates the election of a company representative only in companies with more than 200 employees. Of the 48 million Brazilians with formal employment contracts, 55,2% work in companies with up to 199 employees, according to the Annual Social Information Report (RAIS).
As information They belong to Valor.
Few companies in the commerce and service sectors would have representation, says the president of the General Union of Workers (UGT), Ricardo Patah. These two sectors account for the majority of the union's 12,8 million members. The union leader criticizes the last-minute change in the minimum number of employees, which was 50 in the draft sent to the unions before the reform announcement.
"Minister Ronaldo [Nogueira] had promised us that we would only talk about this issue [the reform] in 2017. The announcement itself surprised us," says Patah. According to data from Rais, 99,3% of the country's 3,9 million companies have up to 199 employees.
The perception of the organization wasn't worse, he claims, only because the government agreed to change the format of the proposed provisional measure, which would have had immediate effect, into a bill to be discussed in Congress. Patah defends cutting 100 employees for the election of a representative – 47,6% of workers with formal employment contracts are in companies of that size or smaller. For these 22,8 million, representation would be done only by unions, which, according to the leader, should be strengthened to face the changes in labor relations.
Helio Zylberstajn, a professor at USP (University of São Paulo), points out that the initial text stipulated that the election would be of a union representative, not just any representative, as outlined in the bill. "It's a step backward," he says, highlighting that without ties to union organizations, the elected worker would have more limited negotiating power.