By Henrique Torrescasana Trevisan

A bill approved by Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies would abolish the common 6×1 work schedule and replace it with a 40-hour, 5×2 week while leaving pay and the rest of the 1943 Consolidation of Labor Laws unchanged, raising the effective hourly cost of formal employment.

With informality already near 37.4 percent and highest in lower-productivity states, the author argues that the higher legal cost floor will reduce formal hiring and push more workers into unprotected informal arrangements.

The piece contends that the core problem is the overall cost and rigidity of formal contracts under the CLT, not the 6×1 schedule itself, and that further restrictions without lowering those costs will shrink the formal sector the law claims to protect.

More than 38 million Brazilian workers fall outside the reach of one of the most extensive labor codes in Latin America, and yet the National Congress is close to making that code even more rigid through a bill that would abolish the six-day work schedule known as “6×1.”

In the first half of 2026, the country’s informality rate hovered around 37.4 percent of the employed population, a level that has persisted even as Brazil’s labor market has recently posted some of its strongest readings since the statistical series began in 2012. That coexistence should at least cast serious doubt on the claim that more enforcement, by itself, would solve the problem.

The Consolidation of Labor Laws, or CLT, is the body of rules that has governed formal employment in Brazil since 1943, setting maximum working hours, workers’ rights, and the payroll charges employers must pay for every employee, among other obligations. The 6×1 schedule—six days of work followed by one day off—is one of the most common shift patterns in the country, especially among retail and service workers. The bill was approved by the Chamber of Deputies by a vote of 461 to 19, and which, at the........

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