Senate Votes to End 6x1 Work Schedule as Campaigns Recast Messages

Overview

• The Federal Senate approved a constitutional amendment to end the 6x1 schedule by a 75–1 vote Thursday, requiring employers to move from a 44‑hour week to 42 hours with two guaranteed days off within two months and allowing up to one year to reach 40 hours.
• Senator Flávio Bolsonaro was absent for much of the session, registered his presence late and voted in favor of the PEC, and his campaign has since downplayed the measure and shifted messaging toward proposals on skills training, credit for entrepreneurs and a proposed 'Ministry of Prosperity.'
• The Lula campaign is promoting the vote as a tangible victory for workers and is packaging it with recent popular moves—debt relief for microentrepreneurs and a proposed Pix payment—to try to boost turnout among first‑round abstainers.
• A new Quaest poll for O Globo and TV Globo shows a tight runoff with Flávio at 46% and Lula at 44% within the survey’s margin of error, and it finds Lula outperforming Flávio specifically among voters who did not vote in the first round.
• The Federal Police’s preventive arrest of Márcio Canella in Operation Unha e Carne was invoked by Lula during his TV Globo sabatina to link law‑enforcement probes to figures in Flávio’s orbit, adding a legal and security theme to the closing days of the campaign.