Salabert’s lunch-break bill pits shorter workdays against legal and cost questions

Salabert’s lunch-break bill pits shorter workdays against legal and cost questions
Federal Deputy Duda Salabert has proposed changing Brazil’s labor rules so meal breaks of up to two hours count as paid working time. The bill would apply to existing contracts without lowering wages and has not yet begun its passage through the Chamber of Deputies.

Salabert’s case rests on the difference between time spent performing tasks and time spent effectively committed to an employer. “You enter work at 8am and leave at 5pm. That makes nine hours. But companies pay only eight hours of work because they do not count lunch time,” she said in a social-media video. She added: “No one will lose the right to eat lunch or have their salary reduced.” The proposal also contains provisions for drivers, railway workers and rural workers, including rules for periods spent waiting at an employer’s disposal.

From that perspective, the measure extends the push to end the six-day-on, one-day-off schedule and treats the lunch interval as part of the worker’s real connection to the job. Salabert argues that someone nominally working eight hours is, in practice, tied to work for nine and often cannot freely choose where to spend the break.

The more skeptical account does not dispute that the bill would reduce effective working time; it estimates that, under a future 40-hour maximum week, a standard one-hour lunch break could bring actual work to 35 hours. But it notes that the bill’s justification offers no estimate of the economic impact and would take effect six months after publication if enacted.

It also highlights a legal fault line: the proposal would prevent collective agreements from removing either pay for the interval or its inclusion in the working day. That restriction could clash with Supreme Federal Court case law that has allowed collective bargaining to reduce or waive some labor rights, provided rights considered absolutely non-negotiable are preserved.

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