Latam is condemned for paying the woman less – 03/08/2023 – Market

The 3rd Panel of the TRT-2 (Regional Labor Court of the 2nd Region), in São Paulo, confirmed the conviction of the airline Latam for having paid an employee a salary lower than that received by other male colleagues with the same function. The company can still appeal the decision.

In a decision on March 1, the judges determined, by majority, that the worker should be compensated in R$ 10,000 for moral damages. “In addition to the plaintiff not receiving the same salary as her colleagues, she was still a laughing stock in the work environment”, wrote the case’s rapporteur, judge Mércia Tomazinho.

Latam said, in a note, that it does not comment on ongoing processes, but that it does not agree with this type of practice. “In 2021 [a companhia] declared its diversity and inclusion policy, with commitments to building organizational foundations and a more inclusive culture that allows for gender equity,” he said.

The worker who went to court worked for Latam for almost 15 years. In September 2018, as she stated in the labor lawsuit, she and three other colleagues were promoted to the position of supervisor of operational control.

At the time, she started to have a salary of R$ 3,671.94, while the three male colleagues received R$ 4,702.38. According to the worker’s defense in the action, when she went to her boss to question the wage difference, she heard that there had been an error in the system, “but that it would not change, as the claimant was a woman and single, she did not have so many expenses”.

Bill announced this Wednesday (8) by the government Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) aims to punish companies that pay different wages to men and women in the same function. According to Planning Minister Simone Tebet, companies that comply with the practice will have to pay fines equivalent to ten times the highest amount paid by the employer.

Witnesses heard in the action by the former Latam employee said they understood that she had the same role as her other colleagues. They said that, in conversation circles, she was called “junior”, in allusion to the lower salary.

According to the March 1 decision, both the worker and the other supervisor promoted at the same time as her had been with the company for more than four years and had been in the same job for more than two years, parameters provided for by the CLT to define the obligation of equal pay.

In the action, Latam tried to prove that the function of the former employee was different. The company’s defense cited, for example, that the colleague who earned the most had taken training courses. For the Labor Court, however, the company did not prove that these trainings resulted in a difference in productivity.

The substitute labor judge Cinara Raquel Roso, who analyzed the case at the 13th Labor Court of São Paulo – South Zone, wrote in the sentence that she considered the evidence of gender discrimination at work to be arduous, “bearing in mind that most of the time discrimination is camouflaged and done subtly”.

For her, however, in the case of the former supervisor at Latam, “the irregularity is clear”. In the first instance, compensation for moral damage was set at BRL 30,000, an amount later reduced in court.

Cinara Roso also wrote that she considered that the worker’s “sadness, frustration and affliction” in the face of the wage difference in relation to her male colleagues was “absolutely presumable”.

The obligation of equal pay is provided for in article 461 of the CLT (Consolidation of Labor Laws). This device defines that “being identical the function, to all work of equal value, provided to the same employer, in the same business establishment, will correspond equal salary, without distinction of sex, ethnicity, nationality or age.”

In addition to the payment of compensation for moral damage, Latam was ordered to pay the wage differences between what it paid to the worker and her colleagues and also the effects on other funds, such as vacations and vacation third, FGTS (Fundo de Garantia do Length of Service), prior notice and 13th salary.

The former employee will also receive a hazard pay premium of 30% of the base salary for working a few hours every day in the aircraft refueling area.