The institutional downgrade of the Brazilian Ministry of Labor: elements for understanding a more than imperfect redesign (2019-2022)

• Autor(a) principal: Grillo, Sayonara
• Data de Publicação: 2024
• Outros Autores: Guimarães, Denise de Almeida, Silva Junior, Eurico Moreira da
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista da Faculdade de Direito UFPR (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://revistas.ufpr.br/direito/article/view/89348
• topic: Ministry of Labor. Institutional redesign. Institutional capabilities. Institutional downgrade.; Direito; Direito Público; Direito do Trabalho; Ministério do Trabalho. Redesenho institucional. Capacidades institucionais. Downgrade institucional.

The central focus of this article is to analyze the institutional downgrade promoted through the redesign of the Brazilian Ministry of Labor and Employment during Jair Bolsonaro’s government (2019-2022). Extinct in January 2019, when its attributions were transferred to a secretariat of the Ministry of Economy, and reestablished in July 2021, the ministerial body underwent a process of institutional downgrading that highlights the policies of labor relations precarization in Brazil. Based on the argument of institutional capabilities, it is asserted that the large-scale redesign implies the loss of institutional autonomy of the new agency created regarding the interpretation, oversight, and enforcement of labor protection norms, with potential impacts on the production of technical legislation and the increase in the interpretative burden of Labor Courts, denoting labor policies subordinate to liberal economic logic. The hypothesis is supported due to the significant decrease in administrative structure, human and financial resources, with implications for labor condition inspections, the economic-financial bias of labor norms interpretation, and negative effects on decision-making in public policies related to labor and employment. The study concludes that the reconfiguration of the attributions of the Ministry of Labor constituted an institutional downgrade, capable of undermining the structure of labor protection for which the institution was created, expressing the secondary nature attributed to labor policies in the period. The methodology involved bibliographic and documentary research in primary sources.