Brazil's Temer announces labor reform proposal

The Brazilian government announced on Thursday a proposal for a labor legislation reform in the country.

The proposal, a "great Christmas gift" in the words of President Michel Temer, establishes 12 points which will be negotiated between employers and employees, with the main one being that agreements between them would be enforced by law.

The reform also includes the number of hours worked in the day, which could be raised from eight to 12 with a maximum of 48 hours of work per week.

A longer workday is already foreseen in some fields, such as healthcare and security, in which people work in 12-hour shifts, with 36 hours of rest between shifts. The government said it would regulate the current situation.

The reform also regulates remote working: lunch hour of at least 30 minutes, and productivity-based wages, among others.

The announcement is only the latest in a series of proposals for reforms the Temer administration made since the new president took office in late August. Reforms in several areas have been postponed for decades in Brazil.

However, several of the measures the government quickly proposed have been harshly criticized for not favoring the working class - quite the opposite, in some cases.

Temer's proposal for social security reform, for example, establishes a minimum age for retirement, regardless of how many years a person has already worked. Under the current system, Brazilians can retire when they complete 30 years of work. Temer himself retired at 55 under this system.

However, if the President's reform is approved, citizens will have to wait until they are 65 to retire, even when they have worked much more than 30 years. In some regions of Brazil, life expectancy is a little over 65, which means in the neediest regions of the country workers would often not live long enough to enjoy their retirement.

In addition, people with physically demanding jobs, such as farm and construction workers who often start working at quite a young age, would have to work many more years to retire, which is likely to compromise their health.

The government announced the proposed labor reform in an effort to modernize the law and prevent a loss of jobs by revising rules so that employees and companies can negotiate.

It remains to be seen how much power employees would really have in labor negotiations: in many sectors in Brazil, trade unions are not strong, and unemployment in the country might make it easier for employers to fire a worker and hire another who accepts their conditions, especially now that the new measure reduces the compensation companies must pay for dismissing a worker without just causes. Endi