Elected government rules out strong increase for civil servants at the beginning of the mandate

The transition team of President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s (PT) government informed this Tuesday (6) that the recovery of salary losses for federal public servants will be “gradual”, ruling out a complete recovery right at the beginning of the mandate.

Lula’s team from the Planning, Budget and Management area also states that it will not proceed with discussions on the administrative reform proposal currently being discussed in Congress. They recommend its withdrawal and the elaboration of another proposal, based on a “new vision”.

“In the case of the Executive, we will have to think about some kind of readjustment within the limit that we will have, and [há] deliveries to society that are urgent and priority. We will have to think of this replacement of losses as a gradual process. There is no way to repair these seven years in the first days of the next government. There will be no conditions for that, we have to be transparent,” said the coordinator of the transition technical groups, former minister Aloizio Mercadante.

The technical group of Planning, Budget and Management granted an interview to journalists this Tuesday afternoon (6), to explain the first points detected in the work of the transition office for the area.

In addition to the issue involving civil servants, Lula’s team for the area also stated that it will discard the administrative reform proposals currently being discussed in the National Congress. As the measure has already passed in some committees of the Chamber of Deputies, however, the withdrawal depends on votes and not just on the withdrawal of the future government.

Economist Esther Dweck said that the group received the Fonacate (Permanent National Forum for Typical State Careers) this week and that it was a request that the elected government withdraw the administrative reform that is in Congress to re-discuss the issue.

However, the transition cabinet defends that there is a reform, but that a new proposal will be elaborated.

“The 2 GTs [grupos técnicos]Planning and Work understand that this is a fair demand [a desistência da proposta atual]given that PEC 32 began, in fact, with a vision of the State completely different from what we understand would be the Brazilian state needed to fulfill everything that President Lula would like to do”, said economist Esther Dweck.

“So, in our understanding, the WGs, this is a fair agenda. Understanding that it has already gone through a commission, so, even if the president agrees with us, he has no power to withdraw it”, he completed.

Such as Sheet showed last week, Lula’s team will recommend that the administrative reform proposed by the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government be discarded and replaced by a negotiation table that discusses the functioning of the public machine in the future administration of the president-elect.

The transition team also defends a readjustment of the PPA (Pluriannual Plan).

The group will also propose to bar the creation of the Green and Yellow Card, a program that makes labor legislation more flexible, defended by the current Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes.

According to Deputy Rogério Correia (PT-MG), the idea is “to be free from PEC 32 [reforma administrativa] somehow discard”. In its place, a negotiation table will be proposed to debate “immediate questions of the squeeze to which the server has been submitted for six years, but also the functioning of the public machine”.

Prepared by Guedes’ team, the PEC (proposed amendment to the Constitution) of the administrative reform was sent by the Bolsonaro government to Congress in September 2020. The text was approved by a special commission of the Chamber in the early hours of September 24, 2021, after of parties changing members in the collegiate to prevent the proposal from being defeated.

Since then, the mayor, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), has been demanding greater commitment from the Bolsonaro government in approving the text, which is now ready to be voted on in plenary. The assessment of the president’s surroundings, however, was that the reform could harm the re-election campaign, as it was unpopular among civil servants, and, therefore, the PEC was in the background.