Heloisa de Alencar
Lawyer at Marcos Martins Advogados
In times of pandemic, employers and employees have many questions about how to proceed with reducing wages and working hours, suspending contracts and even dismissing employees.
The uncertainties of this scenario, since January 2020, have significantly increased the number of labor lawsuits filed as a result of the new coronavirus epidemic, and it is estimated that the number of lawsuits already exceeds 10,000, which together add up to almost R$ 600 million.
The probable cause for the increase in lawsuits stems from the different interpretations of the Provisional Measures created by the government to contain the effects of the pandemic on companies, including Provisional Measure 927, which allows the suspension of contracts and salaries for up to four months, and Provisional Measure 936, which creates the Emergency Program for Maintaining Employment and Income.
With the advent of the Provisional Measures, countless individual and collective agreements were signed between workers and employers to suspend or reduce wages. But while on the one hand the creation of the Provisional Measures prevented many workers from being laid off by companies, since they made exceptions and facilitated the maintenance of employment contracts as well as salaries, on the other hand, the obscure rules of the Provisional Measures led to the judicialization of labor conflicts, bringing legal uncertainty to companies and employers in general.
In the end, companies have adopted the measures that seem most reasonable to them, which will consequently lead to various questions and lawsuits.
MP 927, for example, does not provide clear rules on the issue of suspending employment contracts, failing to objectively provide for the payment of severance pay in the event of termination due to the crisis caused by the pandemic.
In any case, despite the fact that the multiple interpretations of the Provisional Measures have caused legal uncertainty, which is the motivation for the judicialization of labor conflicts, it is a fact that many employment contracts remain active because of them, since mechanisms have been created to encourage the permanence of the employment relationship during the height of the pandemic, and it is now up to case law to remedy the gaps created by the Provisional Measures.
