Government makes “smokescreen” to rescue union tax

The government’s attacks on the labor reform passed in 2017 are a “smokescreen” to rescue union funding. This is the opinion of economist Hélio Zylberstajn, senior professor at FEA-USP and coordinator of Fipe’s Salariometer. The reform put an end to the union tax, a compulsory contribution from all workers, in the amount of one day’s work per year.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) mentioned, when defending a revision of the reform, the “financial suffocation” of the unions after the end of the tax. Their revenue dropped from R$3.05 billion from January to November 2017, before the renovation, to R$65.5 million in 2021.

In April, Minister Luiz Marinho declared that the idea that the tax is deliberated in an assembly of categories is “plausible”, valid for all workers, even non-unionized ones. For Zylberstajn, compulsoriness would only make sense in a scenario of multiplicity and union democracy, where the worker chooses the union that represents him – which does not occur in Brazil.