By Carol Amancio
Brazil's Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Congress, has asked the Supreme Federal Court (STF), the country's highest court, to overturn six points of an injunction by Justice Flávio Dino that sets the transition from the 6x1 work schedule to the 5x2 schedule. The Chamber's legal office filed the request on Friday, Nov. 13, in the virtual plenary session now reviewing the decision.
The message from the Chamber is direct: Congress wants to preserve what it approved. It does not accept that an injunction, in practice, rewrites the choices lawmakers made in Constitutional Amendment 141/2026.
What the Chamber wants struck down
The target is neither the calendar nor the cut in the weekly workload. The Chamber objects to the flexibility rules Dino created to help companies and workers adapt. Among the contested points are:
- A working day of up to 8 hours and 24 minutes, without the need for collective bargaining.
- The criteria for compensating days off, which the Chamber also wants reviewed.
- Deadlines of 180 days to regulate activities with differentiated schedules, micro and small businesses, and public-sector administrative contracts.
- Exceptions to working-hour controls extended to some state-owned companies.
Dino kept the date and opened loopholes
On Thursday, Nov. 12, Dino rejected requests for postponement filed by business associations. He kept Dec. 16 as the start date of the new schedule. At the same time, he authorized temporary adjustments: spreading the 42 weekly hours over five days and compensating days off through collective agreements.
Vote count favors the justice
As of Friday afternoon, the judgment stood at 2-0 in favor of keeping the injunction in full, with Justice Alexandre de Moraes following Dino, the rapporteur of the case. The review continues in the virtual plenary, where justices cast their votes online, and has not yet concluded.
The Chamber says it does not want to delay the end of the 6x1 schedule or suspend the reform approved by Congress. It says it only seeks to correct the legal and operational conditions of the transition. Until the judgment ends, however, the practical design of the change is being decided by the Supreme Court, not by Parliament.
Why it matters
The 6x1 schedule means six days of work followed by one day off. The 5x2 schedule means five days of work and two days off. The change affects workers and businesses across Brazil, and it has now become a dispute between the Legislature and the judiciary over who sets the rules for the transition.
The Chamber's request is not a challenge to the reform itself. It is a challenge to how far a single justice's injunction can go in detailing the new rules that Congress wrote into the Constitution.
