Approved law requiring equal pay in companies – 05/04/2023 – Market

The Chamber approved this Thursday (4th) a bill sent by the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) government that obliges companies to pay the same salary to men and women who perform the same functions.

The proposal for equal pay was presented by the government on International Women’s Day and established a series of obligations for companies to ensure transparency and equity in pay.

The text, however, underwent changes and will be analyzed by the Senate before proceeding to presidential enactment. It passed by 325 to 36 votes. Only Novo advised against — the PL released its bench.

The bill provides that it is “mandatory and will be guaranteed” by the text “equal pay and remuneration between women and men for carrying out work of equal value or in the exercise of the same function”.

Rapporteur Jack Rocha (PT-ES) reduced the amount that should be paid as a fine in case of non-compliance with the rule. The original text established that the company should pay an amount equivalent to 10 times the highest salary, plus the salary difference due.

In the report, however, Rocha established that the fine will be 10 times the new salary of the discriminated against employee, doubled in case of recurrence, but without the retroactive salary difference.

The text also establishes that companies with more than 100 employees will be required to publish semi-annual salary transparency reports, preserving employees’ personal data.

The document will need to have data for easy salary comparison and “proportion of occupation of leadership, management and leadership positions filled by women and men”.

If the company does not publish the report, it will have to pay an administrative fine of up to 3% of the payroll, with a limit set at 100 minimum wages.

At the end of the vote, the rapporteur thanked the parliamentarians for approving the project, as well as members of the federal government. “Here is the commitment of women who understand and know about the political struggle and that, mainly, the wealth we deal with here will bring substantial changes to our country”, she said.

At the request of Minister Simone Tebet (Planning), President Lula announced the approval of the PL for equal pay for members of the Council, which met this Thursday morning at Itamaraty.