The admissibility of a Proposed Amendment to the Constitution (PEC) establishing the national salary floor for nurses, nursing technicians, nursing assistants and midwives was approved this Monday (20) in the Constitution and Justice Commission (CCJ). ) of the Chamber of Deputies.
The PEC was approved in the Senate at the beginning of the month and is now being analyzed in the Chamber. The CCJ only analyzes whether the proposal meets all constitutional and regimental assumptions so that it can be debated by federal deputies. That is, not the merit of the content of the text. The rapporteur of the case was the deputy Bia Kicis (PL-DF).
The proposal attributes the function to a federal law so that a minimum wage level is followed in the country.
A bill on the floor has already been approved in the House and Senate with the provision that the minimum for nurses will be R$ 4,750.00. Nursing technicians must receive 70% of the minimum wage for nurses (R$3,325), while nursing assistants and midwives must receive 50% of the minimum wage (R$2,375). This text, however, has not yet been sanctioned.
The PEC also provides that the Union, the states, the Federal District and the municipalities must prepare or adapt the career plans of the professional categories covered by the end of the financial year in which the law referred to in the proposal is published so that the floors are applied. The floor is valid for both the public and private spheres.
The intention with the PEC is to give legal certainty to the application of the floor for the aforementioned categories. This is because parliamentarians considered that there was a possibility that the salary floor could be suspended by the courts “on the pretext of defect of initiative” if a constitutional provision on the subject was not approved.
The proposal was approved by a symbolic vote, with the Novo party voting against. New parliamentarians took a stand against the proposal by claiming that there is no forecast of a budget source for the establishment of the minimum salary and that the increase in the amounts paid to these professionals can break health institutions. The acronym, however, did not obstruct the vote or ask for more time for analysis.
Deputy Danilo Forte (União Brasil-Ceará) said, in turn, that the resources are guaranteed with another PEC on compensation to states that zero ICMS rates on gasoline and diesel, still pending in Parliament.
At the time of the approval of the proposal by the Senate, the president of the National Confederation of Municipalities (CNM), Paulo Ziulkoski, released a note in which he said it was “regrettable that the PEC does not point to the source of investment for the cost of the floor”.
According to him, the establishment of the floor should cost R$ 9.4 billion a year “only for municipal administrations, resulting in lack of assistance to the population, which faces the effects of the already unfunded Unified Health System (SUS), with impacts on care within the scope of of Primary Care, such as vaccination and care for the most vulnerable population”.
Source: CNN Brasil
