Marília Silva de Melo
Lawyer at Marcos Martins Advogados
The Superior Labor Court issued Joint Act 316/2020, which establishes protocols for the gradual resumption of face-to-face services, observing all the necessary precautions to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
There is still no date set for the return of Labor Court employees to face-to-face work, however Joint Act 316/2020 provides for the return to be carried out in stages.
The first stage would be the return to face-to-face work in the offices of the ministers and units essential to the service of the Court, limited to 30% of the servers per day. The second stage, on the other hand, covers the measure for all units, increasing the limit to 50% of the employees, and authorization to hold in-person sessions of the panels.
The TST understood that gradually the limit of civil servants will be raised to 70% and will add the holding of face-to-face sessions, and in the final stage, there will be a full return to face-to-face activities. However, the units that are successfully carrying out activities remotely, without any loss of productivity, will continue to provide services remotely until the in-person regime is fully re-established.
With the resumption, a minimum distance of 2 meters must be maintained between servers, adopting measures such as team rotation, and there may be a mixed shift, i.e. half a shift in person and the other remotely. These measures will also be extended to trial sessions where only essential staff will physically participate.
If there are judges, civil servants, employees and trainees who are at risk, they will continue to work remotely until the pandemic is under control and they can return to face-to-face work.
Access to the Court will be restricted to people working in person, and there will be a temperature measurement, and people with a temperature above 37.5° will not be able to access the Court, always with the mandatory use of masks.
Also as a preventive measure, there will be a reduction in the capacity of elevators, a ban on meetings with more than eight people, and a 1.5m distance requirement in places where queues may form.
Joint Act 316/2020 was drawn up on the basis of studies carried out by the technical committee, which was set up in June this year, made up of representatives of the Court’s management and administration, as well as health professionals, exclusively to adjust to the return to work due to the pandemic.
