The approval of Constitutional Amendment Proposal (PEC) 221 of 2019 by the Federal Senate establishes the most profound alteration in the organization of the Brazilian work schedule since the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution. The text eliminates the model of six days of work followed by one day of rest and sets a maximum work week of 40 hours with two paid weekly rest days, without salary reduction.

Because it is a constitutional amendment, the text does not depend on the sanction or veto of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT). Promulgation is the responsibility of the presiding officers of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate in a joint session of the National Congress. Once promulgated and published in the Official Gazette of the Union (DOU), the amendment enters into force in a phased manner, with specific adaptation periods for companies, professional categories, and the public sector.

Transition timeline

The transition from the 44-hour work week to the definitive model of 40 hours per week and five working days followed by two days off (5×2 schedule) will occur in two main stages:

First stage (60 days after publication): Two months after the amendment is published, workers become entitled to two paid days off per week, preferably on Sundays. At the same time, the weekly working hours limit is reduced from 44 to 42 hours.

Second stage (14 months after publication): after 12 months from the implementation of the first stage, totaling 14 months from the official publication, the maximum weekly workload is definitively reduced to 40 hours, with a limit of eight hours per day.

During the 12-month period in which the 42-hour weekly limit will be in effect, employers must distribute the two extra hours across the weekdays. If distributed evenly across the five working days, the daily work schedule becomes 8 hours and 24 minutes.

Collective labor agreements and conventions may authorize daily work schedules exceeding eight hours during this transitional period to accommodate the 42-hour schedule, provided that the two weekly days off are strictly maintained.

Once the 14-month transition period is complete, any activity exceeding eight hours per day or 40 hours per week will require the payment of overtime or compensation through a time bank, mechanisms that remain permitted under labor law.

Special schedules and shifts

The new constitutional guidelines do not impose a single work schedule format for the entire market and safeguard the operation of continuous activities and essential services. Uninterrupted services, such as hospitals and health units, public safety, public transportation, urban cleaning, and surveillance, may adopt specific models for organizing and compensating working hours through collective bargaining agreements or conventions.

In these areas, the traditional 12-hour work shift followed by 36 hours of rest (12×36 shift) is not automatically eliminated by the PEC, but will need to be adapted at the negotiating table between employers’ and workers’ unions.

The reorganization of shifts must take into account the reduction of the weekly workload and the minimum rest and meal periods stipulated in the Constitution. The text also refers to future specific laws for the complementary regulation of conditions for categories with their own operational characteristics.

In the case of workers subjected to prolonged confinement, such as on offshore oil platforms, amendments proposing prior exceptions in the constitutional text were rejected by rapporteur Omar Aziz. The parliamentarian pointed out that the work regime for offshore oil workers should be subject to subsequent legal regulation.

Compensation and average monthly days off

The proposed amendment allows companies and unions to establish, exceptionally and through collective agreement or convention, work schedule compensation regimes with shifts different from the 5×2 format, including enabling the eventual continuation of the 6×1 shift schedule.

For this flexibility to be valid before the Labor Court, the proposal requires compliance with two mandatory criteria: the worked days off must be fully compensated within the same calendar month; and the worker is entitled to at least one day of rest within a maximum period of one week of service, and must reach, at the end of the month, an average of two paid days off per week.

The three express exceptions

The text approved by Congress establishes differentiated rules and specific conditions for three groups of workers and economic sectors:

Outsourced public administration workers: To safeguard the continuity of essential public services and preserve the economic and financial balance of administrative contracts, outsourced companies providing services to the State will have up to 12 months after the enactment to adjust their work schedules, instead of the general 60-day period. Contracts amended after 60 days from the publication must already comply with the new schedule. If the public authority and the service providers do not formalize an addendum within one year, the reduction in working hours for outsourced workers will automatically take effect, without a reduction in salary.

Professionals with a university degree and salaries starting at R$ 21,100: the so-called “highly qualified workers,” who are employees with a university degree and a monthly salary equal to or greater than 2.5 times the ceiling of Social Security benefits (currently R$ 21,188.87), are exempt from general daily working hour limits and timekeeping. These professionals can negotiate their schedules directly with the company, but retain the constitutional right to two days of paid weekly rest. This exception does not apply to public employees.

Brazilian labor law already provides for situations where there is no traditional control of working hours, such as in the case of employees who hold positions of trust or who work outside the company in activities where it is not possible to control their hours.

Individual micro-entrepreneurs and small businesses: the proposed constitutional amendment (PEC) stipulates that a subsequent complementary law will create transitional measures for mitigation and fiscal or credit support for individual micro-entrepreneurs, micro-enterprises, and small businesses. The granting of these benefits will be expressly conditional upon maintaining jobs and employment levels in these establishments.

Current contracts and old agreements

The application of the new work schedule to existing employment contracts is direct and immediate, requiring no formal re-hiring or termination of employment. The Constitution guarantees the principle of non-reduction of wages, prohibiting any nominal cut or proportional reduction in employee salaries or in the minimum wages of professional categories.

For workers who already work 40 hours a week or less, the amendment does not create a further reduction in weekly working hours. However, these employees will now have a guaranteed right to two paid days of weekly rest.

In the labor union sphere, clauses in previously agreed collective bargaining agreements and conventions that address working hours or weekly rest periods and are incompatible with the new constitutional parameters will lose all legal validity 60 days after the amendment is published.

Impact on the labor market

The shift to a new work schedule affects tens of millions of workers in operational, customer service, and ongoing production roles across the country.

A technical survey prepared by the Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies (Dieese), based on the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), indicates that the measure will directly benefit 26.8 million workers.

The contingent consists of 22 million employees with formal contracts in the formal sector (equivalent to 54% of the country’s formal workers) and approximately 4.8 million informal workers who register weekly work schedules exceeding 40 hours.

Data from the Ministry of Labor and Employment (MTE) indicates that 14.8 million formal workers were directly subject to the 6×1 work schedule in 2025, while another 29.7 million were already working on the 5×2 schedule.

The scope of the change is also reflected in the profile of contracted work schedules in Brazil. Studies by the National Confederation of Commerce of Goods, Services and Tourism (CNC), structured from the Annual Social Information Report (Rais), reveal that 35.7 million workers under the CLT (Consolidation of Labor Laws), about 62% of the formal Brazilian workforce, currently work schedules ranging between 40 and 44 hours per week.

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