“Labor reform preserved all constitutional rights”, says economist

Economist and professor at the University of São Paulo specialized in the labor market, José Pastore, defended in an interview to CNN, the advances promoted by the labor reform in Brazil, and affirmed that it not only kept the rights foreseen in the original text of the Consolidation of Labor Laws (CLT), but also added new safeguards.

This is the case, according to him, of new work formats such as intermittent work (for certain periods), outsourced, part-time and at a distance (telework or “home office”).

The debate over the reform, which took effect in November 2017, has resurfaced in recent days after former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and PT President Gleisi Hoffmann mentioned the repeal of the 2012 labor reform in Spain to criticize the new Brazilian legislation.

“What Spain is trying to do is reduce a lot of insecurity that those expeditious ways of hiring – by the day, by the hour, by task – have introduced into the country,” said Pastore, who is president of the Employment and Labor Relations Council at FecomercioSP.

“There, the worker is hired by the hour, by the task, and has no labor rights. This is not the case in Brazil. The labor reform preserved all constitutional rights and, in addition, established new ones that were not even part of the CLT.”

This is the case, he mentions, of distance work or outsourced employment, which gained their own regulation with the reform. Pastore also mentions flexibility brought to the worker such as the possibility of slicing annual vacations into up to three periods and the end of the mandatory contribution to unions.

“The labor reform was approved in 2017 and, at that time, no one had the slightest idea that telework, home work, would be so much in demand; it was the reform that came to regulate this way of working, before there was no security”, he said.

“When the company is going to outsource a job, it is obliged to provide the worker with food, a clinic, transport, periodic exams, training. None of this existed at the CLT and it came into being with the reform. These are new rights that were created”, he added.

*Text published by Juliana Elias