Minister and police chiefs make a caravan to ask Guedes for a raise

The Minister of Justice, Anderson Torres, and the heads of the three police bodies of the federal government met this Monday (13) with the Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes, to ask for a salary adjustment.

President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) wants to grant a raise to the police officers, who make up the electoral base, precisely in the year in which he intends to seek reelection.

In addition to Torres, the caravan for the readjustment also included the general directors of the Federal Police, Paulo Maiurino, the Federal Highway Police, Silvinei Marques, and the Penitentiary Department, Tânia Fogaça.

On Twitter, the Minister of Justice posted a photo of the group alongside Guedes, announcing that he had delivered the proposal to restructure police careers to the economic team.

In the Economy, however, technicians privately affirm that the categories expressed the expectation of having high salaries, but they did not come to present a proposal with numbers, which hinders the advance of negotiations at first.

A new meeting must be held when the detailed request reaches the Ministry of Economy.

Technicians need a proposal to do the math and check whether or not the order fits into the Budget. Personnel expenses are subject to the expenditure ceiling, a rule that limits the advance of expenses to inflation.

The proposals put forward by the police chiefs and by Torres to Guedes provide for career restructuring, at a higher and lower level, with a salary impact.

However, the demands for values ​​or percentages of corrections would be defined later by the folders, say interlocutors of the Ministry of Justice.

For federal police officers, for example, the idea is to implement a staggered career promotion standard every five years. The objective, according to who elaborated the proposal, is to avoid career evasion.

The PRF would have the most radical change in the career structure, according to the Torres ministry plan, also with a salary impact. There is also the idea of ​​transforming the position of federal criminal enforcement agent into a federal criminal police officer, linked to the ministry.

Even with the additional slack of BRL 106.1 billion in 2022, thanks to the PEC (proposed amendment to the Constitution) of the Precatório — which changes the calculation of the ceiling and postpones the payment of judicial debts against which there is no longer any appeal —, the space has already been filled with a series of expenses, including the expansion of Auxílio Brasil.

as showed the leaf, parliamentarians are already articulating cuts in other areas, such as Social Security, to boost amendments and the electoral fund for 2022.

Despite the fiscal chess, Guedes’ assistants admit that the police categories have the president’s sympathy and are open to analyzing the proposal.

The president himself has publicly defended the granting of readjustments to civil servants during an election year. In the most recent statement, on Wednesday (8), he said that the measure would be taken without breaking the spending ceiling.

“It would have [que ser reajuste de] 3%, 4%, 5%, 2%… Let it be 1%. This is the idea. Because we are completing three years in my government without readjustment. Now, the readjustment is not to restore all the inflation, because we don’t have space for that”, Bolsonaro said in an interview to Gazeta do Povo.

Internal government calculations indicate that a general readjustment of 5% for all civil servants’ categories would have an impact of around R$ 15 billion, or R$ 3 billion for every 1% increase.

Bolsonaro, however, has already placed federal police, federal highway police and criminal police at the top of priorities for any possible adjustment.

In addition to forming the president’s electoral base, the police are also an important group for Torres. A PF delegate, he must run for a deputy mandate in 2022 for the Federal District, stronghold of the civil service.

In Guedes’ team, the assessment is that an eventual readjustment to the police will not open the door to other groups because the budget is limited, and whoever asks for it later will dispute an even smaller space.

The final design of the measure and how many categories will be covered, however, will still depend on further discussions within the government.

In November, aides to the president estimated that the cost of serving the police would be below R$ 2 billion, but the final impact depends on the percentage of adjustment, which will be a decision by Bolsonaro.

The police officers had the last adjustment applied on January 1, 2019. In the Federal Police, the remuneration of an agent ranges from R$12,522.50 to R$18,651.79 monthly, according to the Federal Government’s Statistical Panel of Personnel. Delegates earn from R$23,692.74 to R$30,936.91.

In the PRF, maturities range from R$9,899.88 to R$16,552.34 per month. Depen agents, in turn, have remuneration between R$5,572.23 and R$10,357.30, according to panel data.