Brazil: Bolsonaro Backtracks to Keep Ministry of Labor Status

In a retract of his previous statements about the structure of his future administration, Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro said that he will maintain "the status" of the Ministry of Labour and Employment but merge it into another institution not yet defined.

RELATED:
Brazil's Bolsonaro to Scrap Ministry of Labor

"The Ministry of Labor will continue with the status of a ministry, it will not be a secretary. It will be the ‘Ministry of such, of such, and of Labor'," said Bolsonaro Tuesday, as reported by Folha do Sao Paolo newspaper.

This decision comes a week after the president-elect said he would quash the cabinet, and prompted citizens' reactions through social media.

"Two things about whether the Ministry of Labor ends or not. 1. Democracy did not end because @jairbolsonaro was elected because the opposition knocked and he stepped back. 2. If he keeps saying ‘do this’ or ‘don’t this’, his word will lose its value."

Brazilian Ministry of Labor - which was already restructured by President Michel Temer in 2016, is responsible for policy and guidelines for employment and income, modernization of labor relations, work safety and health, training and professional development, and urban cooperatives and associations.

Despite the broad range of this ministry’s mandate, Bolsonaro announced on Nov. 7 that he will transfer the Ministry’s responsibilities to “some other ministry.” These declarations drew criticism due to the economic performance of the Brazilian labor market.

According to the latest data released by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the unemployment rate in Brazil fell to 11.9% at the end of September, and still affects 12.5 million people. At the same time, however, the number of self-employed Brazilians, those lacking a formal job and regular monetary income, increased  to 23.5 million people.