STF postpones judgment on agreement between company and driver

The plenary of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) postponed, this Thursday (26), the judgment that evaluates collective labor standards that restrict or limit labor rights not guaranteed by the Constitution. The judgment dealt with cases that occurred before the law that regulated the exercise of the profession of driver.

In the next session, the president, Minister Luiz Fux, will collect the vote of Minister Dias Toffoli and then he will cast his vote.

The discussion began in a lawsuit filed by the National Transport Confederation (CNT) to question Labor Court decisions that condemned companies to pay overtime to external drivers.

The entity questions decisions that declared invalid provisions of collective agreements agreed between carriers and drivers and condemned employers to pay overtime or worked on rest days, in situations that occurred before the enactment of Federal Law 12.619/2012, which regulated the rights and duties of professional drivers.

The rapporteur is Minister Gilmar Mendes. In 2019, Mendes suspended all proceedings on the subject.

In the vote, the minister stated that certain clauses of labor conventions may contravene labor laws, but in an “exceptional” way, and voted in favor of the action that questions the validity of collective labor standards.

“There is the possibility of negotiating agreements to allow workers to remain employed and employers to be able to restructure themselves in times of financial difficulty without excessive reductions. This practice has become even more common during the pandemic period. The reduction or limitation of labor rights by collective agreements must, in any case, respect the absolutely unavailable rights, constitutionally guaranteed”, said Gilmar.

Gilmar was followed by ministers Nunes Marques, André Mendonça, Alexandre de Moraes,

Minister Rosa Weber had a different understanding and voted against the validity of collective norms.

“Unlike civil contracts, in which the application and production of legal effects is linked to the agreement of wills, the employment contract depends on the execution of the contracted obligation (principle of the primacy of reality)”, he said.

The minister was followed by ministers Edson Fachin, Luís Roberto Barroso, Cármen Lúcia, Ricardo Lewandowski.

Next week, the STF is due to judge an appeal on the validity of a collective labor rule that suppressed rights related to the hours spent by workers in their commute between home and work. This process has not yet begun to be analyzed.