Workers' Rights Campaign for a 40-Hour Week Helped Lula Defeat Bolsonaro and Offers a Model for the Global Left
Source: Cruz Bonlarron Martínez. "A Fight for Workers’ Rights Turned the Tide in Brazil." November 3, 2026. jacobin.com
The Gist
The author argues that the campaign to cut Brazil's workweek to 40 hours, driven by a viral worker movement and socialist legislators like Erika Hilton, helped Lula come back and beat Bolsonaro. It forced the Right onto the left's turf and undercut its attacks on LGBTQ+ people. The author thinks the global left should copy this approach of tying working-class demands to the struggles of oppressed groups.
Conclusion
The grassroots-and-legislative fight for a shorter workweek, led by LGBTQ+ socialist politicians like Erika Hilton, contributed significantly to Lula's victory over Flávio Bolsonaro and keeping fascism at bay, and the global left should learn from it by connecting working-class interests with the diverse forms of oppression workers face.
Premises
- A grassroots movement (Rick Azevedo's Vida Além do Trabalho) allied with PSOL legislators, especially Erika Hilton, and sustained by labor mobilization and Lula's own pressure, pushed a constitutional amendment cutting the workweek from 44 to 40 hours with two days off through a hostile Congress.
- The workweek debate became a central issue of the presidential campaign, forcing Flávio Bolsonaro to endorse the reform for fear of losing working-class voters, which amounted to conceding that the Right had been wrong.
- After Lula fell behind in the first round, the workweek issue gave his campaign a way to regain momentum by focusing the contest on what was at stake for the working class.
- The strong electoral showing of the reform's champions (Hilton's record vote total, Azevedo's election) shows the issue resonated with diverse sectors of the electorate.
- A gay man and a trans woman leading a fight to let working-class families spend more time together exposed the hypocrisy of the Right's homophobic and transphobic 'family values' rhetoric.
Assumptions
- The workweek campaign, rather than other factors (economy, candidate quality, turnout operations, other issues), was a significant cause of Lula's second-round comeback.
- Bolsonaro's endorsement of the reform neutralized his own advantage less than Lula's ownership of the issue gained him, i.e., voters credited the left rather than the Right for the reform.
- Individual electoral success of Hilton and Azevedo reflects support for the workweek issue rather than other factors such as name recognition or party base.
- Success in Brazil's context is transferable to other countries' political environments.
- Winning on material class issues while foregrounding LGBTQ+ leaders is an effective way to counter right-wing culture-war narratives.