Seventy-Five to One

Brazil’s Senate on Wednesday 14 October approved PEC 221/2019, the constitutional amendment that ends the “6x1” schedule of six working days to one day off. The vote was 75 to one in both rounds, Agência Senado reported, and the single vote against was cast by Senator Hamilton Mourão. Brasil de Fato lists four senators as absent: Rogério Marinho, Sergio Moro, Márcio Bittar and Ciro Nogueira.

The Senate’s news agency put the next step in its headline: the amendment “vai à promulgação,” goes to promulgation, which it expects in the coming days. The presidential runoff is on 25 October, eleven days after the vote.

What the text does

According to Agência Senado, the amendment gives workers two days of paid weekly rest, one of them preferably on Sunday, without a cut in pay, and lowers the constitutional maximum working week from 44 hours to 40, with a limit of eight hours a day. Hours may still be offset or reduced by collective agreement. Some of the changes, the agency says, take effect in stages.

The reports state the stages differently, but the figures fit together. The agency’s first bulletin says the week falls to 42 hours two months after promulgation. Brasil de Fato says 42 hours within two months and 40 within a year. The Associated Press, in a report carried by CP24, says businesses have 14 months. The rapporteur’s report in the Chamber of Deputies in May set out the sequence, as Mercado & Consumo described it: a first cut of two hours 60 days after promulgation, and a second cut of two hours twelve months after that, a transition of 14 months in all. Brasil de Fato’s year counts from the first cut; the AP’s 14 months counts from promulgation. This publication has not read the final text itself.

The government says more than 37 million workers could benefit, the AP reported, and people in the informal economy, such as freelancers and delivery drivers, are not covered.

Why it does not go back to the Chamber

Article 60 of the Constitution requires an amendment to be “discutida e votada em cada Casa do Congresso Nacional, em dois turnos,” and approved in both rounds by three-fifths of each chamber’s members. In an 81-seat Senate that is 49 votes; in the 513-seat Chamber it is 308. Those are this publication’s calculations. The Chamber passed the text on 27 May by 472 to 22 and 461 to 19, Brasil de Fato reported.

The vote nearly reopened that stage. Senator Oriovisto Guimarães, with 27 co-signers, offered an amendment to make clear that working weeks already below 40 hours would not be cut further. He presented it as a drafting amendment, which, Agência Senado explained, would not have required the text to return to the Chamber. The rapporteur, Omar Aziz, judged that it changed the substance and recommended rejecting it, and Oriovisto withdrew it. The Senate also ran the vote on a special calendar: five sessions of debate in the first round, and a leaders’ motion that waived the three sessions normally required before the second, so both rounds took place on the same day.

Who signs it

The AP reported that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva “is expected to sign the shorter workweek into law next week.” Article 60 assigns that step to someone else: an amendment “será promulgada pelas Mesas da Câmara dos Deputados e do Senado Federal,” the governing boards of the two chambers, and the article makes no provision for presidential sanction. Brasil de Fato reports that the government is preparing a regulatory decree to be published after promulgation. Any ceremony at which Lula appears will mark a text Congress has already enacted.

His opponent in the runoff, Flávio Bolsonaro, finished ahead of Lula in the first round by 2.2 million votes, according to the AP. He voted yes remotely after opposing the measure until earlier in the week, and, the AP said, citing O Globo, told business owners that the new Congress, “where his party could reach a simple majority with other allied parties come February,” could review it. The opposition leader, Rogério Marinho, has already filed PEC 12/2026, which would allow a flexible regime paid by the hour, Agência Senado reported.

A simple majority does not amend the Constitution. Lula called the vote “a historic achievement for millions of workers.” Undoing it would take 308 deputies and 49 senators, twice each.