Labor reform and its implications for workers' health

Abstract

Law 13.467/2017, known as the Labor Reform, brought several modifications to the text of the Consolidation of Labor Laws. Several of these changes disregard the norms related to workers' health, both in the Federal Constitution of 1988 and in the infraconstitutional legislation. The objective of this study was to identify and analyze the possible implications of the Labor Reform for workers' health, considering the constitutional regulations. For the development of the study, the qualitative methodology was used with the adoption of the document content analysis technique. Four amendments proposed by Law 13.467/2017 were analyzed, namely: The possibility of changing the framework of the degree of unhealthiness through collective bargaining; the possibility of reducing the work break also through collective bargaining; the possibility of working in unhealthy conditions during pregnancy/ lactation, and the liberation of outsourcing of any activity. It was found that the "modernization" brought by the labor reform consists, in fact, in the deconstruction of the constitutional and infraconstitutional structure of worker protection, with disregard for health and safety standards hitherto present in the Brazilian legal system. As a consequence, the study points to the likelihood of an increase in the number of accidents at work and work-related diseases.