New minimum wages

On February 29th, President Lula enacted a provisional executive act raising minimum wages in Brazil. (We will explain provisional executive acts on next days.)

From now on, no employee shall receive less than US$ 244.00 per month. The Brazilian working routine consists in eight hours of daily work, five days per week, plus four hours on Saturdays.

With this money a family is expected to pay for their food, education, transport, healthcare… As many people in the world know, it is impossible to do it. Just to give an idea, a Combined Number 1 (Big Mac, French fried and Coke) in Brazil is worth US$ 6.74.

Government usually says minimum wages are low due to retired persons, which receive this amount of money monthly from a compulsory fund maintained by workers and companies taxes. Therefore, there are supposedly few people contributing and to many receiving.

Minimum wages are received by just a few employees. Most of them work in residences.


To read the provisional executive act’s text (in Portuguese), click here.