Abstract
The present article aims to analyze the labor reform recently sanctioned in Brazil. To that end, their effects on the configuration of the central elements of the employment relationship (forms of hiring, working hours, remuneration and social protection) and on trade union organizations will be highlighted. The guiding hypothesis is that the labor reform in question adjusts the regulation of labor to the characteristics of contemporary capitalism, predominating the view of labor as “labor” rather than as “opus”. The reform extends the freedom of employers to determine hiring conditions, the use of labor power and the remuneration of workers. In other words, it seeks to impute the process of defining the rules of the employment relationship to companies, restricting the participation of workers organizations and the State. This process entails, first of all, the increase of insecurity in the workplace and the reduction of labor rights and social protection. The reform also seeks to dissociate trade unionism from their role as class organizations, since the vision of trade union that prevails is one of more decentralized organizations and closely articulated with the interests of companies.
Labor reform; Flexibilization; Labor rights: Trade unions; Employment relationship