Brazil Moves To End the Six-Day Workweek

About one-third of Brazilians in formal employment have a “6×1” workweek—six days of work followed by one day of rest—which is particularly common in sectors such as air travel, hotels, healthcare, retail, and food service. In late May, Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies approved a constitutional amendment that would effectively ban this work arrangement, sending the proposal to the Senate for ratification. 

The proposal would reduce Brazil’s constitutionally set cap on weekly working hours from 44 to 40 and require two paid rest days per week. In Brazil, service workers are typically paid a fixed monthly salary rather than an hourly wage, as is more common in the United States. Because the amendment would prohibit employers from reducing those salaries to reflect the shorter schedule, employers would have to pay the same monthly wage for roughly 10 percent fewer hours of work. 

The amendment was introduced by federal deputy Erika Hilton, a member of Brazil’s lower house from the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL). In Hilton’s view, “Working six days just to get one day off isn’t a life. It’s exploitation….You can’t live only one-seventh of your own life.”

The proposal quickly captured Brazilian attention and gained political momentum, clearing the lower house in a 461–19 second-round vote. For actors and social media influencers, public support for the measure seemed almost mandatory. In an Instagram Reel with over 1 million views, actress Letícia Colin declared: “6×1 is a political project. It’s a system created to keep workers exhausted.” A recent poll found that 63 percent of Brazilians support ending the 6×1 work schedule.

Supporters argue this is a long-overdue reform for workers in grueling service-sector jobs. “I know what it feels like to have swollen feet from standing for eight, 10, 12 hours. I know because I lived it,” said Dandara Tonantzin, a federal deputy from the Workers’ Party, the party of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is seeking reelection this year.

But banning 6×1 is more likely to harm the very workers it is supposed to help. By forcing employers to pay the same salary for fewer hours of work, the proposal would raise the hourly cost of formal labor without increasing workers’ productivity. To manage higher labor costs, businesses may hire fewer workers, raise prices, or automate where possible.

The result would be to push more employees to the informal sector, which already accounts for about 40 percent of workers in Brazil. In fact, many 6×1 workers are already in the informal sector and thus would not be affected by the amendment at all.

As Kim Kataguiri, one of the few federal deputies who voted against the amendment, explained in his floor speech, almost everyone would like to see the end of the 6×1 schedule—the disagreement is over whether this amendment will actually deliver it. “I am not going to lie to a worker and tell him that just because the constitution now says his schedule will be 5×2, that will happen in practice,” Katarguiri said. “That is a lie….The sooner it starts, the sooner people will realize it’s a farce; that their lives haven’t changed, haven’t improved.”

The proposal would also likely make entry-level service work harder to find. Young and inexperienced workers require more training and time on the clock before they become productive. If the hourly cost of employing someone rises, employers will likely have stronger incentives to favor experienced workers over first-time job seekers.

Even for those who keep their jobs, banning 6×1 might make service jobs even more unpleasant. Many of these jobs depend on multiple workers per shift. Under the new rule, employers might simply expect the current workforce to handle the same customer flow with fewer coworkers on the floor.

More generally, the proposal rests on the faulty premise that everyone wants to work less. As it turns out, most people don’t want to work less; they want to earn more.

It’s the same faulty assumption underpinning John Maynard Keynes’ 1930 essay “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,” in which he theorized that, if the productivity gains he observed in his lifetime continued, his grandchildren would work only 15 hours a week—and mostly for fun.

Yet, more than 100 years later, the average American with a full-time job works at least 40 hours a week. That’s because many of us have chosen larger homes, better health care, vacations, and education over shorter workweeks.

The tradeoff is even sharper in Brazil because the constitutional amendment would primarily affect some of the country’s lowest earners. Many of them earn salaries near the minimum wage, which is roughly $300 a month. For workers with basic needs still unmet, an extra day of rest may not feel like liberation; it may simply become time for a side gig. The source of their discomfort is not the lack of free time. It’s poverty.

The prevalence of the six-day workweek in Brazil is a symptom of a stagnant economy. Shorter workweeks and better working conditions emerge from productivity gains and competition for labor. Labor law merely codifies these gains.

An outright ban on demanding work schedules is not the solution. Brazilian workers need productivity growth, more formal job opportunities, and a labor market in which employers compete for them. Mandating across-the-board improvements in working conditions before productivity gains materialize will only exclude the most vulnerable workers—delaying their economic ascent.