Rule about working on commercial holidays is made official; see what changes and the sectors affected

The rule published by the Lula government does not completely change the Bolsonaro administration rule. According to the ministry, only 12 of the 122 previously authorized activities will be affected. They are: fish retailers; fresh meat and game retailers; fruit and vegetable retailers; pharmaceutical product retailers (pharmacies, including compounding ones); markets, retail trade in supermarkets and hypermarkets, whose predominant activity is the sale of food, including the transport inherent to them; trade in regional articles in hydromineral resorts; trade in ports, airports, roads, bus and railway stations; trade in hotels; trade in general; wholesalers and distributors of industrialized products; dealers of tractors, trucks, automobiles and similar vehicles in general retail trade. The measure was formalized about a month after the entry into force of the ordinance dealing with the issue, whose implementation was postponed at least five times. Originally published in November 2023, the ordinance reinforces the agreement between employers and employees, as determined by Law No. 10,101/2000, updated by Law No. 11,603/2007. Furthermore, companies must respect municipal legislation. The text changes provisions of Ordinance No. 671/2021, published in the previous government, which authorized work on holidays without the need for a collective agreement. According to the MTE, the change reestablishes legality and values ??collective bargaining as an instrument of balance between the interests of employers and workers. "What we hope is that the union leaders, workers and employers will have maturity around a table (...) so that you can find solutions, often, to problems that seemed to have no solution. And, the more we talk, we can get closer to this possibility", stated the Minister of Labor, Luiz Marinho. Representative of the business sector, Ivo Dall’Acqua Júnior, president of Fecomércio São Paulo and director of the National Confederation of Goods, Services and Tourism (CNC), stated that the agreement ends a negotiation stage, but that the debate must continue. "The discussion does not stop here. We are absolutely aware of this, especially because new forms, new mechanisms and new tools are being incorporated into the world of work. So, I believe that today we are celebrating a very well discussed agreement, but the discussion does not stop here. Our dialogue must be permanent". The operation of commerce on holidays will depend on authorization provided for in the Collective Agreement g1/ Júlia Christine Understand the rule According to Ordinance No. 3,665/2023, companies in the sectors mentioned above will only be able to operate on holidays if there is a collective labor agreement signed between employers and workers' unions. The collective agreement must establish the conditions for working on holidays, such as double pay, compensatory days off or extra benefits. The measure partially revokes a 2021 rule, published during the Bolsonaro government, which allowed commerce to operate on holidays without the need for collective bargaining. According to the government, the objective of the change is to strengthen the role of collective negotiations, expand guarantees to workers and align the ordinance with Federal Law No. 10,101/2000, which determines that work on commercial holidays can only occur by agreement between the parties. ?? With the ordinance in force, companies that fail to comply with the rules may be punished with administrative fines. According to Fernanda Maria Rossignolli, partner at HRSA Sociedade de Advogados and specialist in Labor Relations, the new rule reinforces the need for collective bargaining for work on commercial holidays. "The main change is the guarantee that work on holidays can only occur if there is express authorization in a Collective Labor Agreement. This returns negotiating power to the unions and ensures that compensatory days off or overtime payments are previously negotiated and monitored", he states. The lawyer also explains that companies that operate without provision in a collective agreement may suffer administrative fines applied by the Ministry of Labor, in addition to responding to actions in the Labor Court. “The operation can be considered irregular, generating significant labor liabilities”, he says.