online petition<\/a> entitled \u201cFor a Brazil that goes beyond work: VAT and Ricardo Azevedo at the forefront of change,\u201d asking the National Congress to amend the Consolidation of Labor Laws (CLT, in Portuguese) to reduce working hours. The document has already reached 1.3 million signatures.<\/p>\nThe issue gained the support of Congresswoman Erika Hilton (Psol), who presented a Proposed Constitutional Amendment (PEC, in Portuguese) on May 1st to reduce working hours. The proposal needs the support of 171 parliamentarians to go through. From this relationship with Hilton, dubbed VAT’s \u201cgodmother\u201d, came the approach to Psol and the idea of running for office.<\/p>\n
How VAT is organized<\/p>\n
Currently, the movement is organized through WhatsApp and Telegram groups divided by state, with their respective coordinators. VAT’s actions are primarily leafleting and publicizing the public petition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Centered around Rick Azevedo, VAT\u2019s national coordinator, the movement has thousands of participants. In the groups, donations are collected for printing materials and, eventually, for Rick’s trips to represent the movement.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe leadership serves to coordinate and ensure that the movement remains true to its essence, without losing focus on exploited and precarious workers. At VAT, we don’t accept disrespect towards coordination, because it is fundamental to keeping the movement organized and purposeful,\u201d says Rick.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd, above all, we don’t allow the movement to become something purely partisan, because it was created by and for workers, with a commitment to maintaining this genuine and collective struggle,\u201d says the influencer.<\/p>\n
Jo\u00e3o Ciocca is one of the participants in the VAT S\u00e3o Paulo Telegram group. He joined as soon as it was created in September 2023. \u201cAmong other things, what drew me to the group was realizing that the last great labor conquest in Brazilian history occurred with bank workers in the 1980s, which established 6 working hours per day and 5 working days per week. However, it didn’t go beyond that category,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was also because of my studies that I expanded my perception beyond my bubble, learning that the reality of the majority of workers falls into this 6×1 dynamic, often with bosses who don’t even respect the law,\u201d says Jo\u00e3o. He recalls that at the market near his home, employees are paid extra to go to work on their day off. \u201cTalking to a worker there, she told me she hadn’t seen her family for three months,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
For Jo\u00e3o, VAT is \u201ca possible nursery for new leaders\u201d and \u201cone of the most important movements today in the struggle for labor rights, which seems to have been abandoned for the last 40 years\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere have been improvements, especially in the presidential governments of the Workers\u2019 Party, and that’s undeniable. However, none of them have significantly changed the structure. On the contrary, we had the legalization of 6×1 in the meantime. Then came the labor reform under Temer’s coup government, which further attacked labor rights and should have been completely repealed on the first day of Lula’s third term,\u201d says Ciocca.<\/p>\n
In his opinion, \u201cRick managed to pull so many people into VAT\u201d because he acted differently from the unions, \u201cwhich have not been able to demonstrate to their grassroots that they really represent what they want.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe union needs to adapt to the changes of the last 20 years in the use of the internet, social media platforms and message apps to know how to talk to and also listen to workers,” says Jo\u00e3o.<\/p>\n
Rick Azevedo believes that VAT is now \u201cexpanding\u201d and it needs to stay focused on the fight to end 6×1. \u201cThat\u2019s our battle.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOur commitment is to make this fight grow, but without letting VAT become something bureaucratic or distant from its roots,\u201d says Rick. \u201cVAT\u2019s essence is the daily struggle of workers \u2013 and this genuine connection will not be lost.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rick Azevedo founded the VAT movement. With thousands of supporters, VAT demands the end of the so called 6-on, 1-off<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[968,27,464,748,268,136],"class_list":["post-302338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-internet","tag-lula","tag-pec","tag-rio","tag-rio-de-janeiro","tag-sao-paulo"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/avozdocerrado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/avozdocerrado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/avozdocerrado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avozdocerrado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avozdocerrado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=302338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/avozdocerrado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/avozdocerrado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=302338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avozdocerrado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=302338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avozdocerrado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=302338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}