Racial quota for server must follow university model – 03/09/2023 – Market

The quota law that reduced racial inequality in higher education mirrors the law for entering the federal public service, which has shown little progress so far and may be extinguished in June 2024, in the opinion of researchers and analysts on the subject.

Percentage progression and greater coverage are cited as examples to increase the effectiveness of the rule that reserves 20% of the vacancies offered in federal contests for black candidates, whether for foundations, public companies or municipalities.

As it is affirmative action, the law, which came into force in June 2014, comes to an end after ten years of its enactment. There are moves in the Senate for this deadline to be extended or even for a new law to come into force.

The Lula government is also discussing the maintenance of quotas for entering the public service, with a more comprehensive law, as shown by the Sheet.

“Our symbol of quota policies that worked is the university quota policy. It shows very clearly that it worked. In public institutions we already have 56% of black men and women, when before the quotas it was 20% and look there “, says Senator Paulo Paim (PT), author of the bill that proposes a new validity for the law of quotas for entering the public service.

The quota law for federal universities, cited by Paim, was sanctioned in 2012 with a ten-year period for reassessment. This should have happened last year, but the discussion is stalled in the Chamber. However, it did not lose its validity, even with the end of its validity.

At the beginning, the law established that institutions start with the reservation of 25% of vacancies for public school students, blacks, indigenous peoples and low-income people. In four years, there was a progression for it to reach 50%.

“The law of quotas for the public service was the image and similarity of quotas for universities, which changed the profile of Brazilian university students. We have public policies like Fies, Prouni, everything descends from affirmative actions back to social readjustment. When this affects the black population, it has a little more impact”, says Mariana Dionísio de Andrade, doctor in political science and professor at Unifor (University of Fortaleza).

Studies show that the norm for the public service had a timid advance. According to research by Instituto República.org, the percentage of black civil servants within the federal civil service in 2014, when the law was enacted, was 42%. In 2020, six years later, the percentage reached 43%.

“Of course, it is still a timid growth, there is still a very small participation of black people in high management positions in the public service, which represents a little of what is the structural racism of our society. But that does not mean that this law it was not efficient within the context in which it was implemented”, says Andrade.

The arguments for the timid advance during the validity of the quota law are the few public tenders held in the period and the pandemic. In 2014, 279 federal public tenders were authorized, with 27,205 vacancies. In 2020, only seven tenders were authorized, to provide 3,813 provisions in the Federal Executive Branch.

A resident of Parelheiros, in the south zone of São Paulo, Renan Augusto Araújo, 23, took a public tender in September 2021 for Banco do Brasil, which, as a mixed economy company controlled by the Union, follows the law of quotas. In February last year, he was called to act as a commercial agent. A year later, he’s being promoted to business assistant.

“I don’t know how long it would have taken for them to recruit me if it weren’t for the quotas,” he says.

Studying the fourth year of economics at Unifesp, Araújo highlights the importance of quotas also for entering higher education. He says he studied his whole life in the public school system and worked as an administrative assistant while taking the pre-university course at night.

“Despite my mother’s support, which was fundamental, I had to pursue what I hadn’t seen at school. So, there’s no way to say that we have the same opportunities. That’s why quotas are fundamental to balance that.”

For pedagogue Felipe Alencar, from the division of teaching and tutorial learning of the pro-rector of graduation at UFABC, the reality of the quota policy showed that more elements are needed for it to be more effective.

“One of them is the hetero-identification booths [bancada usada em algumas instituições com cotas raciais para validar a autodeclaração], where fraud can be analyzed. This contributed to the respect of quotas”, says the professor.

There are also discussions for greater coordination between quota policies, which would give scope in the fight against institutional racism.

For Luiz Augusto Campos, Coordinator of the Consortium of Affirmative Actions, a group formed by researchers of racial quotas, it is necessary to have an integrated national plan “that understands that the process of the social question in the discrimination that exists with certain groups is multidimensional and integrated in different Life stages”.

“We would have to think not only about these affirmations in federal public education and the public service, but we would also have to think about laws and affirmative actions in graduate school, in the job market and in basic education.”

equal pay

Another point under discussion in the elaboration of the new law is salary parity in the public service. According to senator Paulo Paim (PT), the project presented proposes to guarantee that, in the same function, the salary of blacks, whites and women is equal.

“There are surveys that unfortunately still show that, within the federal framework, we still had a very large difference in salary between whites and blacks, an average of 36.7% more for whites”, says the senator.

“As society builds horizontally, this ever-increasing approximation of everyone, regardless of being white or black, to occupy equal functions, is good for all sectors indirectly contemplated.”