Brazil Runoff Puts Workers’ Hours and Wages in Focus

Brazil’s Senate approved a reduction in the working week from 44 to 40 hours on Wednesday, a campaign flagship for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva that Senator Flávio Bolsonaro also supported. The vote came as the two candidates headed into an Oct. 25 runoff in a statistical tie. Flávio pledged to preserve minimum-wage increases above inflation and pensions linked to the minimum wage.

Flávio, the conservative Liberal Party (PL) candidate, said in a TV Globo interview on Friday, Oct. 16, that he would keep the end of the 6×1 work schedule, under which many employees work six days and rest one. Congress promulgated the constitutional amendment on Friday. Flávio had initially opposed it, then voted remotely in favour on Wednesday, Oct. 14. He said he decided to “follow the will of the majority of Brazilian workers.”

Workers’ Hours and Wages

Flávio said he would maintain minimum-wage increases above inflation and wouldn’t unlink pensions from the minimum wage. He also said he didn’t intend to change the Constitution to remove minimum spending levels for health and education, O Tempo reported.

The candidate said he wanted to balance public accounts without harming people most in need of government assistance. He pledged to cut at least 10 federal ministries from a government he said has 39. The interview didn’t specify which ministries would be cut or how much the reductions would save. It also didn’t explain how the wage and pension pledges would be financed. Congress would have to approve any ministry cuts.

Flávio previously called the 6×1 amendment an “opportunistic” attempt by Lula to win reelection. He later said his position changed after listening to workers. The account did not identify workers who spoke with him or name an organized labor group involved in the campaign.

Lula also backed lowering the age of criminal responsibility for the most serious crimes, a proposal Flávio had championed earlier. Flávio wants to reduce the age from 18 to 16. “My opinion, as a Brazilian citizen, is that for any heinous crime I am in favour of lowering the age of majority,” Lula said in a TV Globo interview. He also said: “If I failed to make people understand the government I formed, I cannot blame anyone, the fault is mine.”

A Close Vote and Unresolved Pledges

A Datafolha poll released Thursday night gave Flávio 51% of valid votes and Lula 49%, compared with 52% and 48% a week earlier. The margin of error was two percentage points. A Quaest poll published Wednesday put Flávio at 46% of voting intentions and Lula at 44%, also within the margin of error. Nine percent said they would cast a blank or spoiled ballot, and 1% were undecided.

Rejection rates were similar: 54% said they would never vote for Flávio and 53% would never vote for Lula. Asked whether they feared Lula’s reelection or the Bolsonaro family’s return to power more, respondents split evenly at 43%. Lula led in the northeast and among Bolsa Família recipients; Flávio led in the south and among evangelicals. Both polls took place before the Senate approved the working-week reduction.

Flávio won 47.03% of the first-round vote against Lula’s 45.16%. He secured the backing of almost all right-wing and centre-right parties and promised to maintain the current government’s social programmes and create a Ministry of Prosperity. The candidates were scheduled to meet Sunday in their first debate, on the Band network.

Constitutional Changes and Cabinet Plans

Flávio said he’d give up a second term if Congress didn’t pass his proposal to end presidential reelection. He said he would put forward a constitutional amendment, known as a PEC, to end reelection and bar relatives up to the third degree from succeeding him. “The details will come in the legislative process; I only need one term,” he said, according to CNN Brasil.

The third-degree restriction is Flávio’s proposal, not current law, and would also prevent his father, former president Jair Bolsonaro, from running in 2030, A Crítica reported. Siblings, grandparents and uncles fall within that degree of relation. Flávio said Congress would determine the length of a single term; discussion could include extending it from four years to five or six. A constitutional amendment requires three-fifths support in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, in two rounds of voting in each chamber. Whether Congress would approve the proposal, and how long a single term would last, remained unresolved.