Job Creation Is Contingent on Fewer Workers' Rights, Says President of Superior Labour Court

11/06/2017 - 13h20

The president of the Superior Labour Court, Ives Gandra da Silva Martins Filho, has positioned himself in favor of the new labour laws that will begin to take effect on Saturday (the 11th), arguing that there need to be fewer workers' rights in order to guarantee job creation.

"I'd never be able to tackle unemployment simply by expandings rights. I need to reduce them a little and make social rights slightly more flexible."

When it came to defending a controversial piece of legislation in the labour reform bill (whereby settlements concerning moral damages are proportional to an employee's salary), the magistrate said the following: "When it comes to moral damages, you can't treat someone who earns minimum wage and someone who earns R$ 50 thousand ($ 15,2 thousand) the same way. It would be as if the former won the lottery".

	Mateus Bonomi/Folhapress
	The president of the Superior Labour Court, Ives Gandra da Silva Martins Filho

Mr. Gandra said that the expansion in terms of labour benefits contributed to the recession and that, if on the one hand, the reform contemplated the companies that were dissatisfied with said expansion, on the other, it also conceded benefits to outsourced employees, for example.

In his view, the reform offers stability to both companies and investors while also simplifying the lives of employers and employees.

"When you value collective bargaining, where one can easily hire or lay workers off without facing too much bureaucracy, then the employer who used to think ten times before hiring an employee will now hire two or three employees. That is what's going on throughout all of Europe.

Translated by THOMAS MATHEWSON

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