Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva presented a bill to congress on Monday aimed at regulating the labor rights of workers from ride-hailing apps in the country, including the establishment of a minimum wage requirement. The proposed legislation could impact companies like Uber and Chinese Didi’s 99, but it must first be approved by both the Senate and Lower House in order to become law.
During an event on Monday, Lula acknowledged that the debate in Congress regarding the bill would not be an easy one. In response to the proposed regulation, Uber issued a statement indicating that it views the bill as a significant step towards achieving a balanced approach to regulating work facilitated by platforms. However, 99 did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters.
According to the bill, ride-hailing apps would be obligated to pay their workers at least the national minimum wage, which is currently set at 1,412 reais ($285.37) for an eight-hour workday. Additionally, there would be a limit of 12 working hours per day across all platforms.
Recent data from Brazil’s statistics agency IBGE, dating back to 2022, indicated that there were approximately 778,000 individuals primarily employed in ride-hailing transportation. Furthermore, the bill suggests that ride-hailing workers should be entitled to benefits such as public pensions and maternity leave, in exchange for contributing to social security payments that would be shared between the companies and the workers.
However, the bill aligns with recent court decisions in Brazil that have declined to classify ride-hailing workers as employees, which means they would not be entitled to benefits like paid vacation time. Brazil’s labor minister, Luiz Marinho, emphasized at the event that workers would have the flexibility to choose how many companies they work for and set their own hours, while still being entitled to certain rights.
Marinho further noted that the government stands to gain nearly 300 million reais per month through the implementation of social security contributions as outlined in the bill. Lula expressed his intention to extend similar regulations to food-delivery companies in the future.
The exchange rate at the time of the article was stated as $1 to 4.9479 reais. The reporting was done by Lisandra Paraguassu in Brasilia and Andre Romani in Sao Paulo, with editing by Steven Grattan and Alistair Bell.
