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At the same Brazil Forum 2026 where Luciano Huck caused controversy with Bolsa Família, the owner of the largest fashion retail chain in Brazil warned that the end of the 6×1 schedule could lead to inflation, mass layoffs, and bankruptcy of small businesses, but Ipea calculated that the real impact on retail and industry is below 1%
The PEC that ends the 6×1 schedule was approved in the Chamber of Deputies on Wednesday (27) with 461 votes in favor and only 19 against. Now the text is in the Senate. While 14.8 million workers await the enactment, the business sector remains on the offensive against the change, and one of the most well-known names in Brazilian retail entered the debate with numbers that quickly divided opinions.
Flávio Rocha, heir to the Guararapes Group and owner of Riachuelo, stated on Saturday (23), during a panel at the Brazil Forum 2026, in Guarujá (SP), that the end of the 6×1 schedule will increase retail costs by 18% to 20%, pressure inflation, and force companies to choose between two options: pass everything onto prices or lay off employees.
What Flávio Rocha said in Guarujá
The statement was made at the same event where presenter Luciano Huck caused controversy by criticizing Bolsa Família days earlier. Rocha participated in a panel on economy and labor and went straight to the point.
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After Luciano Huck’s statement about Bolsa Família, the minister responds with data and asserts that the movement is the opposite: about 15 million people have left the program after improving their income.
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Commerce, supermarkets, and bakeries experience a “labor shortage,” and merchants blame Bolsa Família, BPC, and unemployment insurance as major culprits, while workers outside the market avoid minimum wage jobs for fear of losing benefits.
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While criticizing retail costs and warning of the risk of “bankruptcy” in the country, Luciano Hang invests R$ 100 million in a new Havan megastore in Serra Gaúcha, creates 200 jobs, and accelerates the plan to reach 200 units in Brazil by the end of 2026.
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“In the case of retail, the impact is greater because the sector is more labor-dependent. So, we imagine that the cost will rise by about 18% to 20%,” said the businessman. “This will need to be passed on to prices to preserve margins, or it will lead to a reduction in the number of employees.”
According to Rocha, internal studies at Riachuelo indicate an average impact of 13% on general costs for companies with the change in the work schedule. In retail, being a sector with high personnel dependency, the effect would be even more severe. The businessman warned that the greatest risk falls on small and medium-sized enterprises, which currently account for the majority of formal jobs in the country and, according to him, would not have the capacity to absorb the cost increase without cutting jobs or closing down.
Rocha advocated for greater flexibility for sectors that need to operate more days of the week, such as industries, restaurants, and beauty salons. For him, a single national rule would hinder activities that depend on variable schedules to function. The businessman even acknowledged that the debate about working hours and quality of life is legitimate, but stated that the issue is being handled with “populism” in an election year, without adequate analysis of the real economic impacts.
What the approved PEC really changes
The PEC 221/19, approved by the Chamber, mandates the reduction of the weekly working hours from 44 to 40 hours, without salary reduction, and guarantees two days of rest per week, preferably one on Sundays. The implementation occurs in stages:
The working hours decrease from 44 to 42 hours in the first 60 days after promulgation. It reaches 40 hours after 14 months. The text also allows collective agreements to adjust the distribution of hours within the week.
According to the Ministry of Labor, out of the 50.3 million employment ties registered in eSocial, 14.8 million currently operate on a 6×1 scale. The other 29.7 million already work 40 hours a week or less. Minister Luiz Marinho used this data as a central argument: if two-thirds of companies have already adapted their models, the impact of universalizing the change would be manageable.
What Ipea says about Flávio Rocha’s numbers
The numbers presented by Rocha in Guarujá are well above the estimates of the Institute of Applied Economic Research (Ipea). In a technical note published in February 2026, the institute calculated that reducing the working hours to 40 would increase the cost of a formal worker by an average of 7.84%. When this increase is diluted in the total operational cost of companies, the real impact drops significantly.
In the industry and commerce, the additional cost would be below 1% of the operational cost. In service sectors with high labor dependency, such as security and cleaning, the impact could reach 6.5%, still far below the 18% to 20% projected by Riachuelo.
The economist Felipe Pateo, author of the Ipea study, went further and directly criticized the calculations presented by business entities. According to him, the projection of a 21% increase in labor costs released by the National Confederation of Commerce “does not transparently demonstrate” how it reached that number. “Mathematically, there is no way this increase can be more than 10%, because it is exactly the amount of hours the employer will need to compensate,” he explained.
Ipea also compared the impact of the measure to historical minimum wage adjustments, such as 12% in 2001 and 7.6% in 2012, which did not lead to a drop in employment levels. For the institute, the Brazilian labor market has the capacity to absorb the change, provided there is an adequate transition period for more sensitive sectors and small businesses.
The numbers that businesses don’t usually mention
A study from Unicamp, coordinated by economist Marilane Teixeira, indicates that reducing the workweek from 44 to 40 hours has the potential to create up to 4.5 million new jobs in Brazil, as companies would need to hire more people to cover the same volume of hours. The same study projects a 4% increase in productivity with the measure.
A survey by Dieese commissioned by Contraf-CUT estimates that, in the banking sector alone, a four-day workweek could create more than 108,000 new positions, equivalent to 25% of the total employees in the sector today.
Datafolha showed in March 2026 that 71% of Brazilians support ending the 6×1 schedule, a number that has risen compared to the 64% recorded in 2024. Among the workers who currently follow the 6×1 schedule, 68% are in favor of the change.
Why the debate is not yet over
Even with the PEC approved in the Chamber by a historic margin, the Senate can still amend the text before promulgating it. Senators have already approved a request to hold a thematic session on the economic and social impacts of the measure before voting.
The political scenario adds a layer to the debate. With presidential elections in 2026, the 6×1 schedule issue has become an electoral barometer. The Lula government publicly embraced the topic on Labor Day, recognizing the political weight of a proposal with 71% popular approval. The business sector, in turn, intensified lobbying in the Senate, betting on changes to the text that would allow for sectoral flexibility in the measure’s application.
Flávio Rocha is not the only businessman on the opposing side. The owner of Havan, Luciano Hang, had already called the proposal “populism” in 2024. But the voice of the Riachuelo owner gained extra weight for being said at the same Brazil 2026 Forum that concentrated the most controversial statements of the week and at a time when the vote in the Chamber was scheduled for four days later.
What the two statements have in common, Huck’s about Bolsa Família and Rocha’s about the 6×1 schedule, is the place where they were made: a closed business event on the São Paulo coast, just days before decisive votes in Congress. What separates the two cases is that, in the 6×1 schedule, the Ipea numbers arrived before the controversy and the data debate was already set when Rocha took the stage.
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