Brazil labor laws: a drag on economy

More than one million Brazilians bring cases against their employers each year, it costs Brazil $6 billion per year to run courts that settle the disputes, and even the unions say things are getting out of hand. While most coverage of Brazil focuses the country's humming economic engine, there remain big problems under the hood—

one of the biggest being the country’s byzantine labor code. This week’s edition of The Economist makes a good case for why such restrictive statutes—more than 900 of them—stand squarely in the way of Brazil’s long-term growth. The magazine reports that even the union that launched the career of former president and populist hero Lula da Silva, the ABC metalworkers’ union, has joined the chorus of those calling to loosen up the laws, saying that doing so will give the trade group more leeway to protect workers’ jobs by strike deals with employers.