Brazil Labor Courts issue various rulings on worker rights and employer conduct

The Brazilian Labor Justice system has issued several significant rulings involving worker rights, employer misconduct, and legal responsibilities.

A notable case involved the Superior Labor Court (TST) increasing an indemnity from R$ 5,000 to R$ 30,000 for a pregnant telemarketing operator. The court found that a supervisor forced the employee to vomit into a trash can at her workstation to avoid bathroom breaks and maintain productivity metrics, a move described by the rapporteur as having ‘contours of perversity.’

In another instance, the TRT-11 upheld a R$ 30,000 moral damages award for a worker who was physically and verbally assaulted by a company partner while attempting to collect severance pay.

Other rulings addressed specific employment disputes: a worker in Goiás had his dismissal for cause upheld after mistakenly applying herbicide instead of fungicide, causing R$ 900,000 in crop damage; a worker in Minas Gerais successfully overturned a dismissal for job abandonment after proving his absence was due to provisional imprisonment; and a worker in São Paulo was fined for bad-faith litigation after falsely claiming he was dismissed without cause when he had actually resigned.