Overview
- The Tribunal Superior do Trabalho ruled on Tuesday that the national Caixa strike was lawful but must end, ordering employees to return to work immediately and replacing salary discounts with a requirement to compensate missed hours within up to 180 days.
- The court fixed economic terms for the category at full inflation (INPC) plus 0.6% and applied the same index to key benefits such as meal and childcare allowances.
- A prior TST injunction by minister Maurício Godinho Delgado had required at least 60% of staff per agency to remain working, either in person or remotely, under a R$100,000 daily fine for unions that disobeyed.
- The decision preserved many clauses of the previous collective agreement, kept existing PLR rules, and asked for paritarian technical bodies to study the Saúde Caixa plan instead of imposing a new funding model.
- The underlying dispute centers on Saúde Caixa contributions—unions seek a 70/30 employer/employee split and the removal of a 6.5% employer cap while Caixa cites actuarial deficits in the hundreds of millions and said about 3,000 agencies were affected during the strike.