Brazil's Supreme Court upholds Labor Court precedents on job stability, closing the door to a blanket review
In ADPF 1.288, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the attempt to challenge, in a single action, four Labor Court precedents on job-security protections for pregnant employees and workers injured on the job: companies still have no abstract path to contest these issues.
The ruling: Brazil's Supreme Court (STF) decided, on September 8, ADPF 1.288, filed by the National Confederation of Services (CNS) against four Labor Court (TST) precedents on job-security protections. The rapporteur, Justice Nunes Marques, unanimously rejected the request, stating that the existence of binding precedents at the TST does not stop parties from using the procedural tools already available to challenge their application to a specific case, but that is different from relitigating the precedent's validity in the abstract, through a blanket action. According to the ruling, assessing the CNS's arguments would first require interpreting ordinary labor and social-security legislation, which makes the alleged constitutional violation only indirect: the reason the STF considered the ADPF unsuitable for that kind of blanket review.
The four precedents that were upheld deal with situations that come up constantly in day-to-day HR work: Tema 55 (the validity of a resignation submitted by a pregnant employee), Tema 125 (job-security protection for a worker who suffered a workplace accident or occupational illness), and Temas 134 and 163 (protection for pregnant employees: refusal of reinstatement and substitute compensation, including in probationary contracts).
In practice, the ruling closes a door some companies were watching with expectation: the chance to reverse, all at once and through an abstract action, the interpretations that currently work against employers when they terminate pregnant employees or workers injured on the job. These issues can still be argued case by case, but they were not abolished in the abstract. That reinforces, in practice, the need to treat every termination in these categories as an individual point of attention, not as a bet on a change in case law that never came.
This lands squarely on the radar of anyone handling labor and union relations and termination compliance: decisions to terminate a pregnant employee or an employee on leave after a workplace accident remain exposed to the same risk of reinstatement or compensation that already existed, and that risk did not get, and will not get anytime soon, a blanket "once and for all" fix through an abstract action.
We use technology and Artificial Intelligence to map, with each company, where the highest-risk terminations are concentrated (pregnant employees, workers on leave, injured workers) before they turn into a labor claim. If your company doesn't yet have that x-ray of its own exposure, check out Nexus's free diagnostics (5 minutes).
Does your company know today how many ongoing terminations involve pregnant employees or employees on leave after a workplace accident?