Ceará’s Small Dairy Farms Face Pressure From New Work Rules
Antunes Mota said the margin in small-scale dairy farming and processing was too limited to absorb the requirements of the new legal work schedule. Under the 5×2 arrangement, employees would have Saturday and Sunday off, creating a need for replacement labour that, he said, businesses could not afford to hire.
“The margin is very small and cannot meet the legal requirements of the new working schedule,” Mota said. He added that he had no financial capacity to employ additional staff to replace workers who would now be off at the weekend, and that other dairy processors faced the same situation.
Mota said Ceará’s small dairy sector could disappear under the new conditions. He also said he did not know how larger milk producers would meet the legal requirements of the 5×2 schedule, while describing the outlook for smaller operators as particularly difficult.
He argued that larger producers with the means to expand their workforces would also face higher costs. They would have to sell their milk to processing companies at higher prices, while processors would pass those costs on when negotiating with supermarket chains.
According to Mota, supermarkets would then raise prices for milk and dairy products. He described the possible result as higher inflation and lower consumption, saying that a customer who previously bought two litres of milk might buy only one. A litre of milk was being sold for R$7.59 at a supermarket in Aldeota the previous day.
The report also described staffing concerns in healthcare. Directors of Unimed, Ceará’s largest doctors’ co-operative and the owner of one of the state’s largest health plans and two major hospitals, met to discuss measures intended to keep services operating around the clock, every day of the week.
Maintaining that schedule would require Unimed to recruit more specialised staff, particularly nurses and nursing assistants. The report said such workers were difficult to find in the labour market and that similar meetings and concerns were present across different areas of economic activity.
