The Bill, in general terms, adds §3 to article 401 of the Consolidation of Labor Laws (CLT), to provide for the fine for violation of the provisions of item III of article 373-A, which prohibits considering sex, age, color or family situation as a determining variable for purposes of remuneration, professional training and opportunities for professional advancement.
The company that practices such wage discrimination, with a distinction in wages between employees, may be punished with the payment of an amount corresponding to up to five times the value of the wage difference found, limited to the respective period of employment or the 5-year prescriptive period provided for in article 11 of the CLT (five-year prescriptive period), in favor of the employee who is the target of the discrimination.
The provisions of the Bill bring great progress to the Brazilian legal system, especially labor legislation, to achieve due wage equity in labor relations.
Currently, labor law provides that, if employees perform the same function, they are entitled to the same salary, regardless of gender, ethnicity, nationality, or age. These provisions are contained in Article 461 of the CLT and Summary No. 6 of the Superior Labor Court, which provide for equal pay for equal pay for the same function.
The innovation of the Bill is to give greater effectiveness to the Principle of Equality emanating from the Federal Constitution and emphasize the punishability of discriminatory acts committed by the company in the case of salary differences between employees resulting from discriminatory acts based on gender, age, color or family status.
Unfortunately, despite numerous internal company policies regarding equality in labor relations, Brazil still has a large disparity in salaries, even more so when analyzing the difference in salaries between genders.
Based on recent data published by IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) on March 04, 03, women receive around 2021% of men's salaries, for the period of assessment related to the year 77,7.
This difference and disparity in values, for the same period of calculation, is even greater when analyzing higher-paying positions, such as director and management positions, where women earn only 61,9% of the income of men.
Although, in the opinion of the vast majority of the population, this salary difference is merely “fictitious” and supposedly “non-existent”, the numbers demonstrate and effectively prove that the salary difference between genders still persists today.
It is important to emphasize that the provision for the application of fines for discriminatory acts applies not exclusively to salary differences between genders, but also to discrimination based on age, race or family status, which reinforces the effectiveness of the principle of equality enshrined in the Constitution.
The Bill aims to eradicate this archaic and retrograde mentality regarding salary differentiation in labor relations, preventing and punishing companies that persist in practicing such discriminatory acts against their employees.
The Bill was awaiting presidential sanction, but the President of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira, requested that the Presidency of the Republic return the bill for analysis, since, as they verified, the changes made by the Senate were not limited to the wording of the Bill, but also to the merits discussed.
After a new review, and the analysis being returned to both Houses, the project must be submitted for presidential sanction, which, despite having expressed opposition to the Bill, according to the information released, must sanction it.
