BRASÍLIA — Senator Paulo Paim, who says he worked in foundries and factories himself, told the chamber on Wednesday night that he felt like “a poor Black boy” who had waited 50 years for this moment, in TEH’s translation of his Portuguese.
Then the Senate voted 75 to 1, in two rounds on the same night, to end Brazil’s 6×1 schedule, six days of work for one of rest, and to cut the maximum workweek from 44 hours to 40 without cutting pay. The vote came 11 days before the Brazil runoff between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro.
The people it reaches are mostly poorly paid. A study by the government research institute Ipea found that 80 percent of contracts above 40 hours a week paid up to two minimum wages, or 3,242 reais, with the share rising to 90 percent at three. Senator Leany Lemos, citing labor ministry and IBGE data, counted 36.2 million formal contracts above 40 hours. The labor-union research group Dieese, using 2025 household survey data, counted 26.8 million workers who would gain, 22 million of them formal and 4.8 million informal. The figures are not directly comparable: one counts contracts, the other people.
The change is not instant. Agência Brasil reported that 60 days after promulgation companies must adopt a five-day schedule and a 42-hour cap, and 12 months after that the cap falls to 40, a 14-month transition in all. Rapporteur Omar Aziz kept the text the Chamber of Deputies passed in May, so it does not go back and can go straight to promulgation. “Since the 1988 Constituent Assembly, this is the greatest achievement of Brazilian workers,” he said.
The politics are not hidden. Flávio Bolsonaro voted for it remotely while campaigning in Rio Grande do Sul, Agência Brasil reported. Senator Randolfe Rodrigues, the government’s leader in Congress, said Bolsonaro and his campaign coordinator, Rogério Marinho, had first called it electioneering and said they were against it. Marinho was marked absent. Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party freed its senators to vote as they chose, and former vice president Hamilton Mourão cast the only no.
Even supporters raised a warning. Senator Marcos Pontes, who voted yes, said the gain must not become “a loss for those we want to protect,” because micro and small businesses employ many of the people on 6×1. Senator Vanderlan Cardoso, a businessman, answered from experience: he said his own firms dropped 6×1 more than five years ago and found it eased a labor shortage.
The Senate’s own reporting varies: its news page describes the first step as a 42-hour week while a related video headline says 40. Promulgation has no confirmed date, and until it does the 60-day clock that starts the shorter week has not begun to run.
