Temporary Transfers: TST Opens Public Hearing in May

This page is a translation of the original Portuguese text, provided for convenience. It deals with Brazilian law. If there is any discrepancy, the Portuguese version prevails. Read the original in Portuguese

Brazil’s Superior Labor Court (TST) has scheduled a public hearing for May 26 on the criteria that determine when an employee’s transfer is temporary, the condition required for payment of the premium provided for in the CLT (Brazil’s Consolidated Labor Laws).

What the Superior Labor Court Is Weighing

The country’s highest labor court will bring together experts, public officials, and representatives of civil society to debate an issue that affects thousands of workers across Brazil: the transfer premium. The central question is how to define precisely what makes a change of workplace temporary, as opposed to permanent.

In practice, the outcome of this hearing could set clear rules on when an employer must pay the 25% premium on the salary of a transferred worker. Currently, the CLT provides for this right in Article 469, paragraph 3, but the lack of objective criteria produces conflicting rulings among judges and regional courts throughout the country.

The debate will take place under the repetitive appeals procedure (Topic 93), a mechanism that allows the court to set a binding thesis. This means the final decision will serve as mandatory guidance for every level of the labor court system, bringing uniformity to how the issue is understood. This type of judgment is reserved for questions that generate a large volume of cases with contradictory decisions, which shows how much the issue matters in practice for the Brazilian labor market.

How to Take Part in the Public Hearing

Anyone who wants to contribute to the debate can register as a speaker or as an attendee. The period to express interest runs from April 13 to 30, 2026, and only through the electronic form made available by the court. Requests made by other channels, such as a petition filed in the case record, will not be accepted.

The reporting justice intends to take the debate beyond the strictly legal community. The call seeks professionals who can offer technical, accounting, administrative, and economic input. In practice, this makes room for accountants, economists, human resources managers, and union representatives to bring their perspectives to the hearing as well.

The court’s decision will serve as mandatory guidance for every level of the labor court system in the country

For workers who have been through a transfer, the hearing is a chance to see their experiences reflected in the institutional debate. Many employees struggle to prove that a move to another city was temporary, especially when the employer claims the transfer is permanent in order to avoid paying the premium. Because the law lacks clear parameters, each case depends on the individual judge’s interpretation, which produces unpredictable results for both sides.

Practical Impact for Workers and Companies

Clear criteria from the court should reduce the legal uncertainty surrounding employee transfers. Today, a worker transferred to another city may receive the premium in one regional court and have the claim denied in another, depending on the judge’s view of whether the move was temporary.

With a binding thesis, both employees and employers will have greater predictability. Workers will know more clearly when they are entitled to the 25% premium. Companies will be able to plan transfers with more confidence, knowing in advance what financial obligations follow from the ruling. Anyone who deals with deadlines for labor claims knows that a uniform interpretation prevents drawn-out disputes and unnecessary costs for both sides.

The issue is also relevant to professionals who work under intermittent work arrangements, since how “temporary” is defined may influence other debates about short-term employment relationships and their effects on pay. Companies that routinely move teams between branches or job sites will need to reevaluate their internal mobility policies in light of whatever the court decides.

The expectation is that the public hearing will give the court the input it needs to build a well-grounded decision, one capable of settling an issue that generates thousands of cases every year in the labor courts. The final judgment is expected in the months after the hearing, once all the contributions received during the event have been reviewed.

History of Article 469 of the CLT and Settled Case Law

Article 469 of the Consolidated Labor Laws, in force since 1943, was significantly amended by Law 6.203 of 1975, which introduced the transfer premium in the article’s third paragraph. The rule provides that, when the service requires it, the employer may transfer the employee to a location other than the one where the employee was hired. But if the transfer is temporary, the employer must pay a premium equal to twenty-five percent of the employee’s salary for as long as that situation lasts. The paragraph’s brief wording, combined with the absence of a statutory definition of “temporary,” has produced decades of conflicting interpretations in the regional courts and in the Superior Labor Court itself.

For a long time, the court’s case law swung between two approaches. The first, more restrictive, treated a transfer as temporary only if it had a fixed term set in the contract, with an express provision for returning to the original location. The second, broader approach recognized a transfer as temporary whenever the move was not, as a matter of fact, permanent, regardless of any contract clause. The consolidation of Precedent (Súmula) 43 of the Superior Labor Court and Jurisprudential Guideline 113 of Subsection 1 of the Individual Disputes Section provided some guidance, but it did not resolve the disagreements over borderline situations, such as successive transfers, assignments to a construction site or project with no set end date, and relocations to newly opened branches.

Implications for Remote Work, Hybrid Arrangements, and Internal Mobility

Today’s job market poses new challenges for the application of Article 469. With the growth of remote work and hybrid arrangements, regulated by Law 14.442 of 2022, there are more and more situations in which an employee lives in one city, usually works remotely, and is occasionally required to report to a physical office in another location. Whether such occasional attendance amounts to a temporary transfer, with the right to the premium, is a question the public hearing called by the Superior Labor Court is expected to address.

Another sensitive issue involves work on projects with no fixed end date, a common practice in large construction projects, the offshore industry, and technology companies. When an employee is sent for two, three, or five years to a work site far from home, traditional case law tended to deny that the transfer was temporary, reasoning that such a long duration amounted to a permanent move. The opposing view, defended by some labor law scholars, holds that duration does not undermine the temporary nature of a transfer when the return was planned from the start. The court’s final definition on Topic 93 should provide objective criteria for these situations, with a direct impact on the payroll of companies whose operations are spread across the country.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the transfer premium provided for in the CLT?

It is an extra 25% on the salary of an employee who is temporarily transferred to another workplace. The right is provided for in Article 469 of the Consolidated Labor Laws and applies only when the move is not permanent. The discussion before the court aims precisely to set objective criteria for that distinction.

Who can take part in the public hearing called by the court?

The hearing is open to public officials, experts, and anyone who can offer technical clarification on the subject. Registration must be done exclusively through the electronic form between April 13 and 30, 2026. Both speakers and attendees must register within the deadline set by the reporting justice.

How does a repetitive appeals decision affect cases already in progress?

When the court sets a thesis under the repetitive appeals procedure, it becomes binding on every level of the labor court system. This means that pending cases dealing with the same issue must follow the established position, which reduces conflicting rulings among regional courts and speeds up the resolution of pending cases.

As informações deste artigo são de caráter informativo e não substituem consulta jurídica individualizada. Cada caso possui particularidades que exigem análise específica.