News
17/01/2019

Court overturns agreement prior to reform that prohibited outsourcing in sugar cane plants in São Paulo

Companies in the sugar cane industry in the interior of São Paulo obtained a preliminary injunction (provisional) in the second instance to suspend an agreement signed with the Labor Prosecutor’s Office prior to the new labor law and which prohibited the outsourcing of labor in the harvest. The agreement was made in early 2017 by Usina Santa Isabel and the sugarcane supplier Santa Luíza Agro Pecuária, both from Novo Horizonte. At the time, the provision of third-party services was regulated by the jurisprudence of the Superior Labor Court (TST), which, by way of summary 331, indicated the prohibition against outsourcing the so-called core activity.

Mauricio Pepe De Lion, partner in the labor area of Felsberg Advogados, says that the decision may be a way to ensure the competitive operation of companies, but at the same time ensure that the matter is addressed in more depth when discussing its merits. “If the MPT lodges an appeal, the provisional decision rendered in a monocratic manner must pass through the scrutiny of a collegiate body. I believe that this is why there was now a decision halfway through”, he says. “In any case, it is a good precedent, because it demonstrates the court’s commonsense positioning when it realizes that labor relations have changed”, he adds.

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