Molotov

Comrades and colleagues, let us see if His Excellency's resolve to avoid listening to this Congress, united and democratic, holds up once his primary argument is removed.

Thank you.

Bill to Implement a Limited Eight-Hour Work Day

Whereas the Republic of the United States of Brazil has already agreed to a national five-day work week,

Whereas the industrial workers of Brazil should not endure conditions less favourable than those in other countries,

Whereas His Excellency Mr. President Washington Luis has expressed an opposition to directly acceding to the Hours of Work (Industry) Convention of 1919 primarily and specifically due to an isolationist and anti-League of Nations foreign policy, and that issue must be addressed in order for humanitarian reform to pass,

• Section 1. The Republic of the United States of Brazil shall implement a national eight-hour work day for industrial workers, which shall be identical in its regulations to Articles 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 14 of the Hours of Work (Industry) Convention of 1919, as defined by the League of Nations here.

• Section 2. This bill shall go into effect thirty-one (31) days after passage.

We strongly support the passage of an eight-hour workday. We chastise anyone who would stand against it, as they do not stand against merely the bill. They stand against the workers, the people, the families, the foundation of our great nation. The rights of workers are non-negotiable: they are human rights.

Brazil is not an island, and we cannot be a feudal backwater in the new global economy. If we are to be respected, if we are to be a democracy in the age of democracy, then we must empower our people. Our managers and corporate entrepreneurs should not be our overseers and our masters; our state should not support the subjugation of the individual to anything but his free will, and certainly not the interests of the large landowners and wealthy elites. We do not stand for a resumption of the barbaric practices of the yesteryears--we stand to move beyond them.

Any resistance to this path of progress should be called what it is, and we will continue to do so for the workers of Brasil.