For more than eight years, Simone has worked at Casas Guanabara, a Rio de Janeiro supermarket chain. She is now a checkout supervisor and works six days a week, a schedule known in the country as the escala 6×1. Some nights, she doesn’t finish work until midnight, and it can take her another hour to get home. But what weighs on her most is the lack of time outside work. “I don’t have time for almost anything,” she says.
Over the years, she has missed her children’s school events, celebrations, and birthdays. Her younger son is still a minor, and while Simone is at work, her older son often takes care of him. Her only day off offers little relief; housework and other tasks accumulate during the week, leaving little time to rest.
Simone is one of roughly 15 million formal workers in Brazil estimated to work a 6×1 schedule. In recent years, growing frustration with the six-day workweek has fueled a national movement demanding more time away from work. The campaign has since reached Congress, where a legislative proposal would reduce the maximum workweek from 44 to 40 hours and guarantee two paid days off each week without cutting salaries. What began as a demand for more time away from work has grown into a national political fight, putting workers’ rights at the center of the debate ahead of Brazil’s general elections in October.
A Movement is Born
The movement to shorten Brazil’s workweek took off in 2023. Rick Azevedo, then a pharmacy worker in Rio de Janeiro, posted on social media about the exhaustion of a six-day workweek with only one day off. Other workers began sharing their own experiences, which pushed Azevedo to found the movement Vida Além do Trabalho (Life Beyond Work). A petition launched in September 2023 calling for an end to the 6×1 schedule gathered nearly three million signatures by November 2024, ushering a complaint long voiced by individual workers into the national political debate.
In recent years, growing frustration with the six-day workweek has fueled a national movement demanding more time away from work.
The campaign soon found an ally in Congress. In February 2025, federal deputy Erika Hilton of the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) introduced a constitutional amendment calling for a 36-hour workweek spread over four days, with three days off and no reduction in pay.
By the time the proposal came to a vote in the Chamber of Deputies in May 2026, lawmakers had settled on a more moderate compromise. According to Alencar Santana of the Workers’ Party (PT), who chaired the Chamber of Deputies’ special committee responsible for examining the proposal, the business sector “strongly opposed” the 36-hour workweek. Negotiations eventually moved toward a 40-hour, five-day workweek, a model some companies already use. The final text would gradually reduce the maximum workweek to 40 hours over five days, with two paid days off and no salary cuts. But the movement’s central demand remained intact: an end to the six-day workweek. Later that month, the Chamber approved the measure by an overwhelming majority, with 461 deputies in favor and 19 against in the final round.
The proposal then moved to the Senate, where it cleared another important hurdle on September 2. The Senate’s Constitution and Justice Committee approved the text and sent it to the full chamber. The final vote was initially expected before the elections. However, it was postponed amid opposition to the project in the Senate.
The Cost of a Second Day Off
For workers like Simone, however, the debate is not simply about cutting four hours from the workweek. It is about how much time they have after work, commuting, and other responsibilities are factored in. Márcio Ayer, president of the Rio de Janeiro Commerce Workers’ Union, calls this a “theft of time” that extends beyond working hours to long commutes and the difficulty of fitting everyday responsibilities into a single day off.
The burden is particularly heavy on young workers. A study co-produced by the Rio de Janeiro Commerce Workers’ Union in 2023 analyzed labor market data and found a particularly high share of 18- to 24-year-olds in occupations with workweeks exceeding 40 hours. Young workers made up nearly 42 percent of food-service attendants and about 35 percent of shelf stockers.
The burden is particularly heavy on young workers.
Ayer sees this as part of a broader pattern in which young Brazilians enter the labor market through jobs that leave them with little control over their time. “The schedule turns life into an alternation between working and sleeping,” he says, “with no room for anything beyond immediate survival.”
For businesses that depend on being open throughout the week, the proposed change raises different concerns. Paulo Solmucci, executive president of Abrasel, an association representing Brazil’s bars and restaurants, says requiring two days off could worsen existing labor shortages. He estimates that labor costs could rise by at least 20 percent, with some of the increase passed on to customers through higher prices. Abrasel instead favors greater flexibility in how businesses and workers arrange working hours. “The question is whether banning the sixth day would actually solve that problem,” Solmucci said. “In our view, it would not.”
However, research from Brazil’s Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA) suggests that the increase in business costs could be more modest. Researchers estimate that reducing the workweek from 44 to 40 hours would raise average hourly labor costs by about 7.8 percent. In most sectors, the estimated increase in total operating costs would be less than 5 percent.
“The increase in the cost of an hour of labor is not so large that it could not be, at least partially, offset by an increase in productivity,” said Joana Simões de Melo Costa, a researcher at IPEA’s Directorate of Social Studies and Policies. Costa said companies could also absorb some of the increase through smaller profit margins or changes in work schedules.
Ayer challenges Abrasel’s argument for greater flexibility. He argues that such arrangements can look very different in sectors where workers have little bargaining power. He favors collective bargaining with minimum protections guaranteed by law over individual agreements. “What is at stake is not the model of the workweek,” he says, “but who decides how people spend their time.”
For Ayer, the debate also extends beyond questions of costs and productivity. He describes reports of chronic pain and exhaustion so severe that some workers struggle even to get out of bed on their only day off. “It is a question of public health and the right to life,” he says.
6×1 and the Elections
In Rio de Janeiro, support for the cause is visible on the streets. Amid campaign stickers bearing candidates’ names and numbers on clothing, utility poles, and walls across the city, stickers calling for an end to the 6×1 schedule have become a common sight. A Futura poll conducted in late August and early September found that 67 percent of voters supported a 40-hour workweek with two days off and no reduction in pay. The issue could also matter at the ballot box: 35 percent said a presidential candidate’s position on the 6×1 schedule could influence their vote in the first round of elections on October 4.
The issue could also matter at the ballot box: 35 percent said a presidential candidate’s position on the 6×1 schedule could influence their vote.
Simone is among them. After years of working a 6×1 schedule, she says the issue will directly influence her vote. “My vote today goes to whoever is fighting to end this schedule,” she says.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva supports ending the 6×1 schedule and has made the 40-hour week part of his labor agenda. On the other hand, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro has not said whether he would support the proposal. Instead, he has backed an alternative championed by his campaign coordinator, Senator Rogério Marinho, to preserve the 44-hour weekly limit while giving workers and employers greater flexibility in how they are arranged.
Those differences came into focus in the Senate on September 2, when Marinho was one of four senators to oppose the proposal in committee. The government planned to bring it to a vote in the full Senate, where constitutional amendments require at least 49 of 81 votes. Although government leaders estimated they had the support of 53 or 54 senators, they could not guarantee those votes. Randolfe Rodrigues, the government leader in Congress, blamed an opposition effort to obstruct the vote, which he said Bolsonaro and Marinho had coordinated. Rather than risk defeat, the government postponed the vote.
Alencar Santana, the lawmaker who chaired the special committee that examined the proposal, said that Senate President Davi Alcolumbre has publicly pledged to bring the proposal to a vote after the elections. But he also believes the presidential election results could affect the proposal. If Bolsonaro wins, Santana said, “he will probably try to prevent the proposal from being brought to a vote.”
“It would change a lot,” Simone says when asked what having a second day off would mean for her. She would like to return to studying, take a professional course, or perhaps even pursue a university degree. Above all, Simone imagines having time to properly rest and spend more time with her children and family. “If necessary,” she says, “we’ll take this fight to the streets.”
Emilia Bailer is a journalist and researcher based in Rio de Janeiro covering Brazilian politics, labor, and social issues for international media.