“This right ripped of in reactionary time": The first Brazilian Holiday Law (1925-1930)

Abstract

This paper analyze the first Vacation Act in Brazil, approved in December 1925. The reasons for its approval are discussed, as well as the resistances imposed by the bosses in the face of the measure and the forms that the workers found to demand their fulfillment in the final years of the First Republic.

If, in one hand it is possible to apprehend that the state prioritized this law precisely because it is not a classic claim of the labor movement, on the other hand we will see how the law was appropriated by the working class and served as an agglutinator of interests and played an important role to reorganize sectors that were worn out after the repression it suffered during the 1920s.