The approval of the Proposed Amendment to the Constitution (PEC) 221/2019 by the Federal Senate marks the most significant change to Brazil's labor organization since the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution. Validated by 75 favorable votes and none against.Opposingly, Senator Hamilton Mourão (Republicanos-RS)The text abolishes the six-day workweek model and establishes a weekly maximum working time of 40 hours with two days of paid weekly rest, without any salary reduction.
Since it is a constitutional amendment, the text does not depend on the approval or veto of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT). The promulgation is the responsibility of the Presiding Boards of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate in a joint session of the National Congress. Once promulgated and published in the Official Gazette of the Union (DOU), the amendment comes into effect gradually, with specific deadlines for adaptation for companies, professional categories, and the public sector.
Transition Schedule
The transition from the 44-hour workweek to the final model of 40 hours per week with five days of work and two days of rest (5×2 schedule) will take place in two main stages:
First stage (60 days after publication)Two months after the amendment's publication, workers will be entitled to two days of paid rest per week, with Sunday being the preferred day. Simultaneously, the weekly working limit retreats from 44 to 42 hours.
Second stage (14 months after publication)After 12 months of implementing the first stage, totaling 14 months from the official publication, the maximum weekly workload definitively drops to 40 hours, with a limit of 8 hours per day.
During the 12-month period in which the 42-hour weekly limit will be in place, employers must distribute the two excess hours across the weekdays. If evenly divided among the five working days, the daily schedule becomes 8 hours and 24 minutes.
Collective labor agreementsThey may authorize daily schedules exceeding eight hours during this transitional period to accommodate the 42-hour schedule, as long as the two weekly off-days are strictly maintained.
Upon completion of the 14-month transition, any activity exceeding 8 hours per day or 40 hours per week will require the payment of overtime or compensation in a time bank, mechanisms still permitted by labor law.
Special regimes and shifts
The new constitutional guidelines do not impose a single working hour format across the board and protect the operation of continuous activities and essential services. Uninterrupted services, such as hospitals and health units, public security, public transportation, urban cleaning, and surveillance, may adopt specific models for organizing and compensating the working hours through collective labor agreements or conventions.
In these areas, the traditional 12-hour shift work schedule of 12 hours on and 36 hours off (12x36 schedule) is not automatically abolished by the PEC, but it will need to be adapted in the bargaining tables between employer and employee unions.
The reorganization of the on-call shifts should consider the reduction of the weekly workload and the minimum rest and feeding periods established in the Constitution. The text also refers to future specific laws for additional regulations on the conditions of categories with distinct operational characteristics.
In the case ofWorkers subject to prolonged confinement regimeIn line with oil platforms at sea, amendments proposing prior exceptions in the constitutional text were rejected by rapporteur Omar Aziz (PSD-AM). The legislator noted that the work regime for onboard petroleum workers should be the subject of subsequent legal regulation.
Compensation and monthly average of vacation days
The PEC allows companies and unions to establish, on an exceptional basis and through an agreement or collective bargaining, compensation regimes for working hours with different schedules from the 5x2 format, even potentially continuing the 6x1 schedule.
To be valid before the Labor Court, the proposal requires the fulfillment of two mandatory criteria: the worked breaks must be fully compensated within the same calendar month; and the worker is entitled to at least one day of rest within a maximum interval of one week of service, aiming to reach, by the end of the month, an average of two days of paid rest per week.
The three explicit exceptions
The text approved by Congress establishes differentiated rules and specific conditions for three groups of workers and economic sectors:
Outsourced public servantsTo safeguard the continuity of essential public services and preserve the economic-financial balance of administrative contracts, outsourced companies providing services to the state will have a period of up to 12 months after promulgation to adjust schedules, instead of the general 60-day period. Contracts amended after 60 days of publication must already observe the new working hours. If the public power and the service providers do not formalize an additive term within a year, the reduction of working hours for outsourced personnel will come into effect automatically, without salary reduction.
Professionals with a higher education degree and a salary starting at R$ 21,100So-called hypersufficient workers, who are employees with a university degree and a monthly remuneration equal to or greater than 2.5 times the ceiling of social security benefits (currently R$ 21,188.87), are exempt from general daily working hour limits and point control. These professionals can negotiate their working hours directly with the company, but they maintain their constitutional right to two days of paid weekly rest. This exception does not apply to public employees.
Labor legislation already provides for situations where there is no traditional working hour control, such as in the case of employees who hold trust positions or work outside the company on activities where it is not possible to control the hours.
Individual microentrepreneurs and small businessesThe PEC provides that a subsequent complementary law will create transitional measures for mitigation and fiscal or credit support for MEIs, microenterprises, and small businesses. The grant of benefits will be explicitly conditioned on maintaining job positions and employment levels in establishments.
Existing contracts and old conventions
The application of the new working hours to existing employment contracts is direct and immediate, not requiring re-hiring or formal termination of the labor link. The Constitution guarantees the principle of irreducibility of wages, prohibiting any nominal or proportional reduction in the salaries of employees or in the minimum wage levels of professional categories.
For workers who already fulfill a weekly working hour of 40 hours or less, the amendment does not generate any further reduction in the weekly working load. However, these employees will have their guaranteed right to two days of weekly paid rest.
In the union plan, clauses in collective conventions and agreements previously agreed upon that deal with working duration or weekly rest and are incompatible with the new constitutional parameters will lose their entire legal validity 60 days after the amendment's publication.
Impact on the labor market
The transition of the working hours reaches tens of millions of workers who perform operational, service, and continuous production functions across the country.
A technical survey prepared by the Department of Intersyndical Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies (Dieese), based on the Continuous National Household Survey (Pnad) by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), indicates that theThe measure will directly benefit 26.8 million workers..
The contingent consists of 22 million formal sector employees (equivalent to 54% of the country's celetistas) and approximately 4.8 million informal workers who record weekly hours exceeding 40.
Data from the Ministry of Labor and Employment (MTE) indicates that 14.8 million formal workers were directly subject to the 6×1 schedule in 2025, while another 29.7 million were already engaged in 5×2 activities.
The scope of the change is also reflected in the profiles of contracted workdays in Brazil. Studies by the National Confederation of Commerce of Goods, Services and Tourism (CNC), structured from the Annual Information Relations (Rais), reveal that 35.7 million celetistas, approximately 62% of Brazil's formal workforce, currently fulfill weekly workdays between 40 and 44 hours.