The Government has a set of changes to the labor law that will go to Parliament soon. It’s a dense folder, full of technical language and it’s easy to lose track of it. But some of the measures directly affect very concrete things: how much it costs to fire us, how much we can work without receiving overtime, and what type of contract the company can hire someone to do our work.
One of changes It has to do with dismissal costs. Currently, dismissing an employee involves costs for the company, and these costs act, in practice, as a disincentive. The proposal reduces these costs. The effect is not just financial. After all, when leaving is cheaper, the balance in salary negotiations changes. We have fewer arguments, even if we are not formally negotiating anything. We more easily accept schedules, functions or salaries that we would otherwise question, because the feeling of substitutability is greater. It’s not a change that you feel overnight, but it’s the kind of thing that changes what we think is normal to ask for or expect from a job.
Another measure facilitates the call annual leave. It is the system in which we work more during certain periods and recover this time by taking time off, without receiving overtime. It existed before, but there was friction: the company needed to negotiate with workers to implement it. What the proposal changes is that this agreement is no longer mandatory. Companies can now apply the mechanism unilaterally, within certain limits. For those who already have the feeling of working more than they are paid for, this change does not solve anything. It just makes it harder to challenge this situation.
There are also changes that make it simpler to subcontract functions that are currently performed by people with direct contracts. In practice, the same work can be done by someone in a smaller company, without the same legal protections and with less ability to negotiate collectively. Anyone in technology, communication or services already knows this logic well. The proposal gives you more legal leeway, which means less ambiguity for companies and less room to question the model.
What unites these measures is neither a conspiracy nor a particularly hidden agenda. It’s a direction. And the direction is to make the job market more flexible for those who hire, which tends to mean less stable for those who are hired. The Government’s argument is that this creates more jobs. The counter-argument is that it creates employment in worse conditions and that this exchange has been made for years without conditions having improved for most people. For a generation that has experienced fixed-term contracts, green receipts and unpaid internships up close, the question remains: flexible in relation to what, exactly, and for whom?
THE strike on June 3rd was called by the unions, but participating does not require any affiliation. It is an individual right, it is in the Constitution, and reprisals for exercising it are illegal. There are those who think that strikes no longer work, that the world has changed and that these forms of pressure have lost their effectiveness. It’s a legitimate argument. But a strike continues to do something that other forms of protest do not do in the same way: it makes visible, in aggregate and on a single day, how many people consider that a given situation has gone from a problem to be resolved to a line that should not be crossed. It is not a guarantee of results. It is a way of measuring and showing our discontent.
If the package moves forward as it is, some things that are currently objectionable practices will simply become the norm. And there is a real difference between a situation that can be challenged and one that can no longer be challenged because it is now covered by law. This is the difference that is at stake in the coming weeks and it is in our hands to assert our rights.
