Controversial vote on outsourcing taking place

The House of Representatives will put to a vote on Wednesday (8) a bill regulating outsourcing contracts. The proposal is the first item on the agenda. On the evening of Tuesday (7), the House approved procedure on an emergency basis to the text, which allows it to be considered by the plenary without going through commissions.

While it has stirred up a great deal of protest in Brazil, especially among labor unions, and may even be disasterous for the average Brazilian worker it could prove to be a boon for expats here in Brazil since the law, if adopted, will apply to both private and state-owned companies. This will open the door for expats to work in state-owned companies where the jobs have, until now, been reserved solely for Brazilian citizens. There are even rumors that it may also open the public service since the government would then also have the ability to outsource jobs.

The new law will also give companies the ability to outsource any position, unlike now where they can only outsource jobs that are considered "middle activity", but they cannot outsource "end activity" jobs. For example, while a university can outsource cleaning, secretarial and security services, they cannot contract teaching staff from outside sources. That restriction would end should the bill pass.

Large state-owned companies like Petrobras outsource lots of jobs in cleaning, security and secretarial services and those are open to expats because they are, in fact, hired by outside companies who aren't restricted. However under current regulations any middle management and administrative jobs there are internal hires and reserved ONLY for Brazilian citizens. That may soon come to an end under the proposed new regulations.

So while this might look like a gloom and doom scenario for Brazilian workers, it may turn out to be a gold mine for expats, opening up jobs that were never before available to them. It certainly will be something to watch very closely over the next several months.

Cheers,
James    Expat-blog Experts Team