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Comments on Brazils labour laws: Employer, beware | The Economist

Comments on Brazils labour laws: , beware | The Economist.

Brazil’s labour laws

Employer, beware, an archaic labour code penalises businesses and workers alike

Mar 10th 2011 | SÃO PAULO | from the print edition

IN 1994 Ricardo Lemos (not his real name) and two friends bought a chain of pharmacies in Pernambuco, in Brazil’s north-east. Immediately afterwards they were taken to court by four former employees of the pharmacies who claimed they were owed 500,000 reais (then $570,000) for overtime and holidays. Since the new owners lacked the payroll records, the labour court ruled against them—even though they had only just bought the business and the claimants had been in charge of payroll and work scheduling. The court froze their bank accounts, so they had to close the stores, with 35 redundancies. Seventeen years later three of the cases have been settled, for a total of 191,000 reais. The last drags on as the claimant’s widow and son squabble over how much to accept.

Richard Meijer

What I am doing: Besides running a privately hold real estate business I am blogging om MasterclassBrazil.com. MasterClass Brazil was set up to provide a one-stop source of deep-knowledge for the growing foreign business community in Brazil.

Why: Having been in Brazil for around 20 years, I have seen many big companies, expats and individuals failing miserably. I have burned myself once in Brazil, setting up ProgressOil, a company focused on the supply of Brazilian castor oil. I am now running a privately hold real estate business in Brazil.

From all these experiences I have learned a lot. Despite the fact that I speak the language reasonable well, have a strong network and understand the do's and don'ts better, I am absolutely not saying I am an expert or specialist. Everyday I am learning new things and I believe Brazil is changing in such a rapid pace that the only way to survive in Brazil is to generously absorb and understand the information available to you.

From my experience I have learned that there is a lot of information, facts and data about Brazil. I have set up MasterClassBrazil to structure this information so you can turn it in true knowledge, enabling you to be successful in your endeavors.

There is nothing in the world so rewarding as sharing expertise and knowledge.

Richard Meijer