Overview
- The Supreme Federal Court has logged four votes to sustain Minister Flávio Dino’s liminar, which keeps the first step of the transition scheduled to begin on 16 December 2026.
- Dino’s order confirms the constitutional guarantee of a 42-hour week with two paid weekly rests from the December date and schedules a final cut to 40 hours on 16 December 2027.
- To ease the change, the liminar allows, if no collective agreement is reached by 15 December 2026, a temporary five-day distribution with daily shifts of up to 8 hours and 24 minutes and exempts the 24-minute daily excess from overtime pay until 15 December 2027.
- Dino emphasized that the decision does not permit individual bargaining and that any sector-specific adaptations must occur through collective bargaining with mandatory union participation for activities such as hospitals, aviation and offshore work.
- Employers’ confederations CNC and CNI have challenged the timetable in ADIs 8.041 and 8.042 and the virtual vote remains open with six ministers required to register their positions by Monday, 16 November 2026, while the liminar also sets renegotiation and contract-adaptation windows that will affect payroll, hours calculations and public procurements.