Brazil’s TikTok-born workplace revolution fights for more than one free day a week

Rick Azevedo, a resident of Rio de Janeiro, had been going from job to job for 12 years. All his positions had one thing in common: six consecutive work days, with one day off. On a Sunday night in 2023, consumed by exhaustion, he told himself that enough was enough. His boss had just called to ask him to come in early to his Monday shift as a pharmacy assistant. Feeling powerless and angry, the Brazilian grabbed his phone and logged into TikTok to vent. “When are we, the working class, going to start a revolution in this country against the 6x1 schedule? […] It’s an obsolete slavery,” he said.

An infinite number of security guards, mall workers, supermarket cash register operators, Burger King employees and staff at 24-hour convenience stores immediately identified with his complaint. Quickly, the view count for Azevedo’s catharsis reached into the hundreds of thousands. The clip kicked off an uprising of Brazilian workers. Politicians took note.

A little over two years later, the reduction of the workweek — and the vindication of the right of workers to free time — is at the center of political debate. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is promoting a shorter workday for the same amount of pay as one of his primary rallying calls for the October elections. “No right is as urgent today as the right to time,” the president emphasized during his Christmas address. “It’s not right to work hard for six days and only have one to care for the body and the mind, to spend time with one’s family, have fun, and raise one’s kids.” They were the words of a president who was once a worker and union leader. In Congress, various pieces of legislation to cut down the workweek are already being debated.

And so, the most-populated country in Latin America has joined the global movement for more free time and better compensation. Official numbers suggest some 33 million Brazilians (two-thirds of those with formal employment) work from 41 to 44 hours a week, a large part of them in the 6x1 schedule. Most of them are mixed-race or Black and earn less than two minimum wages.

Lula’s team has enthusiastically embraced the cause, with an eye to the middle class and this year’s elections. While the poorest Brazilians remain loyal to the president and the Workers’ Party, much of the country’s middle class — commerce and service industry employees, Uber drivers, entrepreneurs, etc. — distrust them. Many are convinced that improvements in their lives are due solely to personal effort, and that public assistance discourages people from working.

With his pledge to end the 6x1 policy and a major tax cut that has just come into effect, Lula hopes to win over part of the right-wing electorate. The politician recently reminded the country that he’s been advocating for shorter working hours for 45 years. His government supports a reduction to a maximum of 40 hours a week, with two days off, and claims that it will even improve productivity, one of Brazil’s major weaknesses. Business leaders warn that the change is a threat to jobs.

Azevedo, the 32-year-old pharmacy worker who sparked this debate, recently spoke with this newspaper during the Rio city council’s summer recess. Voters elected him as a councilor in 2024. He never dreamed that his outburst, not to mention he himself, would get this far.

When his video went viral, Azevedo started looking for accomplices on social media, and together, they formed the Vida Além do Trabalho (Life Beyond Work, in Portuguese) movement. Soon, the Socialism and Freedom Party (onetime political home of the assassinated Marielle Franco) recognized the group’s potential, and recruited Azevedo. The son of a retired janitor, he left his job and the 6x1 to enter politics.

“If we begin 2026 with the working class as a national priority, it’s due to the pressure exercised by workers on Congress and the government,” Azevedo says by telephone, satisfied and surprised. “It’s very promising that we have gotten here in such a short time.”

Councilor Azevedo says that the 6x1 means “not having a life outside of work, depriving workers of the most basic rights: time to spend on one’s health, self-care, family, religion and pleasure… and when it comes to women, we’re talking about double or triple shifts.” He also has a message for conservative legislators, who have been hesitant to adopt the cause: “You can’t say you support the family and not defend the end of the 6x1.”

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