The Senate plenary unanimously approved this Thursday (2) the Proposal for Amendment to the Constitution (PEC) 11/2022, which establishes the national salary floor for nurses, nursing technicians, nursing assistants and midwives. .
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 text 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 PEC 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 aforementioned categories. This is because senators considered that there was a possibility that the salary floor could be suspended by the courts “on the pretext of defect in the initiative” if a constitutional provision on the subject was not approved.
“The idea, in short, is not to frustrate these categories, especially public health workers”, wrote Senator Davi Alcolumbre (União Brasil-AP) in his opinion.
“Together with doctors and other health professionals, they exposed their own lives, when they didn’t lose them, in a fight against an initially unknown enemy. In the case of the professionals mentioned, what draws attention is the low pay and the working conditions, which are often unhealthy or precarious”, he also said.
The first signatory of the PEC, senator Eliziane Gama (Citizenship-MA), said in the justification of the proposal that, “it will be useless to approve the PL of the salary floor if the next day it is suspended by the courts of the country, on the grounds of vice. of initiative”.
Alcolumbre neither suggested nor accepted suggestions for changes to the text proposed by Eliziane Gama.
The PEC was approved in two rounds on the Senate floor and is now being analyzed by the Chamber of Deputies.
Source: CNN Brasil
