According to a study by CNI, FGV and Competitive Brazil Movement, the number of actions in the Brazilian Labor Court is almost 3 times higher than the OECD average
Labor reform () resulted in an economy of about R $ 15 billion To Brazil from 2022 to 2024, according to a study released this Friday (3.out.2025) by (National Confederation of Industry), (Competitive Brazil Movement) and (Getúlio Vargas Foundation).
The survey analyzed the impact of the modernization of laws on the number of processes and the costs for the judiciary, companies and workers. This is the estimated economy per year:
- em 2022: R $ 8 billion;
- em 2023: R $ 6 billion.
- em 2024: R $ 699 million –Houve increase in actions in the Labor Court.
The country even registered 2.76 million new labor lawsuits in 2016, the year prior to the then president (MDB). The number fell to 1.65 million in 2022, but rose to 2.1 million in 2024.
Last year, Brazil had 9,961 lawsuits per million inhabitants, almost 3 times the average of (organization for economic cooperation and development), which is 3,486.
The executive counselor of the Brazil Competitive Movement, said that the labor reform was “Fundamental to reverse the historical neck of judicialization”but the current growth curve distances the OECD average country.
“[O cenário] REForça the urgency of structured new agendas to simplify the legislation, attack the outbreaks of legal insecurity and thus ensure a real and perennial relief to Cost Brazil ”he declared.
The study attributes part of the recent increase to the flexibility of the rules of gratuity of justice by the (Supreme Court) and by the (Superior Labor Court), which reduced the risk of the worker to pay costs or fees if the lawsuit loses. According to the CNI, this stimulated mass filing with standardized petitions and generic allegations, a practice called “Predatory Litigation”.
Entities calculate that if Brazil resume the trajectory of falling processes, the annual economy can reach R $ 10.9 billion in 2027. They also state that the reform had positive impacts on outsourcing – 99% in the processes on the subject since 2017 – and in collective bargaining, with a reduction from 25,000 to 1,500 court disputes on collective norms.
Other topics that registered fall were hours in itinere (worker displacement time) Intra -day intervals, salary equalization and incorporation of function gratification. Already requests for approval of extrajudicial agreements rose from 2,755 in 2017 to 85,847 in 2024.
To Alexandre Furlan, Chairman of the CNI Labor and Social Development Council, “Reducing labor legal uncertainty due to greater clarity in labor relations rules leads, for the productive sector, a more competitive and efficient business environment”.
Labor reform in November 2017 with changes in more than 100 CLT devices (Labor Law Consolidation).
Among the main points, it began to allow collective agreements to prevail over legislation on specific topics, regulated intermittent work, flexed rules of journey, expanded the possibility of outsourcing for all activities and established new criteria for actions in the Labor Court.
The objective declared at the time was to modernize labor relations, reduce bureaucracy and give more predictability to companies and workers.
