Manoel Dias

Manoel Dias (13 August 1938 – 22 August 2026) was a Brazilian lawyer and politician, who was affiliated with the Democratic Labour Party (PDT), a party he helped to establish. He was the Brazilian Minister of Labour and Employment from 2013 to 2015.

Life and career Dias was born in Criciúma, Santa Catarina on 13 August 1938, the son of Anselmo Fortunato Dias and Cândida Borges Dias.

He began his public life in the 1960s, when he was a leader in student unions. During this period, Dias graduated with a law degree from the Federal University of Santa Catarina, and went on to practice law in Criciúma. He was elected as a city councilor in the city of Içara in 1962 as a member of the Brazilian Labour Party (PTB). His mandate, however, was revoked after the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état. He was forcibly imprisoned for 11 months. With the decreeing of Institutional Act Number Five, in 1969, he was imprisoned again, with his political rights suspended for 10 years.

After the PTB was eventually reregistered as a political entity by Ivete Vargas, he participated in the founding of the PDT in the beginning of the 1980s, jointly with Leonel Brizola and other leaders.

On 31 December 2014, it was announced he would remain as minister in the second term of the Dilma Rousseff government. During her second mandate, he was tasked with dealing with the effects of the 2014 Brazilian economic crisis. He claimed that the increases in unemployment could be reverted by the second semester in 2015 through gains in the automobile industry and subsequently exporting cars to Mexico and other countries in Latin America, as well as through civil construction. He alleged that investments by the provisional government for the construction of public housing units would cost 84 billion real, which would generate jobs.

Death Dias died in Florianópolis on 22 August 2026, at the age of 88.