The federal government is studying a regulation to create a new model of social security contribution for app workers, especially transport and food delivery, with the forecast of contributions from both companies and workers.
According to the Minister of Labor, José Carlos Oliveira, there is already a preliminary design of a new legislation, which has been debated with workers and platforms, but not yet a closed proposal.
“Finding a new model of legislation is not easy,” he said this Wednesday (27) at a meeting with journalists.
There is still no timetable for the legislation to be sent to Congress, possibly through a bill, but the intention is to have that happen by the end of this year.
The central concern is to find a way to include workers in Social Security, but without placing them as CLT workers.
“Workers have already been clear that they do not want to be CLT, they want to remain self-employed, they want to maintain the freedom to define working hours and days, as they do today,” said the ministry’s executive secretary, Bruno Dalcolmo, who is heading the negotiations.
Without giving details, Dalcolmo reveals that the negotiations carried out so far foresee the creation of a new model of contribution to the INSS to cover this category. The proposal being analyzed includes a payment by the companies, while making it clear that there is no employment relationship with the workers.
“They (the companies) know that they will have to contribute and that they need to increase the relationship with the workers”, said Dalcolmo.
At the same time, the concern is not to create legislation so harsh that it ends up making the business unviable or with little competitiveness. “In places with lower purchasing power, with a smaller population, they may end up without services”, said the secretary.
The legislation should also include a contribution by workers. Today, they can do this as an individual microentrepreneur (MEI), but most do not.
The intention is that, with the contribution of the worker and companies, an application worker may receive, in retirement, more than a minimum wage, which is paid to taxpayers as MEI.
“With the incentive of receiving more than the minimum wage, it can attract more workers. Everyone will have to give in, companies and workers,” said Dalcolmo.
Despite noting that workers charge, in meetings they had with the government, other issues such as greater transparency in payments made to them by companies, Dalcolmo pointed out that the social security issue is central, and also includes the government’s interest.
“If a worker like that on a motorcycle has an accident, he ends up in the SUS”, he recalled. “We need to look at working conditions, we need to offer some kind of security.”
One of the points that is still under discussion is the scope of the measure. At first, it may only cover app drivers and delivery people, and then include other categories. Dalcolmo recalls that today there are several types of services offered to an entire delivery logistics network for online commerce, which is also supported by applications.
The precariousness of work, with the growth of applications such as Uber and iFood, among others, has occurred in several parts of the world, and new labor laws are emerging to try to encompass this new form of relationship between companies and workers.
Spain recently passed a law that requires the signing of contracts between apps and drivers and delivery people. Defended as an alternative by former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who appears in first place in polls of voting intentions for the presidential election, the Spanish alternative is criticized by Dalcolmo.
“Spain passed a law that ended up not advancing and did not improve the environment,” he said.
In a note, Uber stated that it publicly defends the inclusion of app workers in Social Security with a part of the contribution coming from companies “in order to reduce the amount to be disbursed by partners”.
“It is essential that this social security integration is based on a more advantageous model for drivers and delivery people than the current options, considered very expensive and bureaucratic by most of these workers”, said the company.
Rappi stated that it participates in negotiations on this topic through the Brazilian Association Online to Offline (ABO2O). Sought after, iFood and 99 did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Source: CNN Brasil
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