Read this Thursday’s edition of the FolhaMercado newsletter (9) – 03/09/2023 – Market

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Equal pay law

The government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) presented a bill that penalizes companies that pay higher wages to men than to women in the same function. The expected fine is ten times the highest amount paid by the employer.

The proposal was announced this Wednesday, in reference to Women’s Day, and will still be analyzed by Congress. Experts on the subject, however, questioned the effectiveness of the measure (see below).

Understand: the CLT today already provides for the payment of a fine for cases of unequal remuneration, but what the new legislation proposes is, in addition to a more bitter fine, saying textually that equal remuneration is mandatory for men and women in the same position, with the same conditions.

• How it is today: the text talks about discrimination based on “sex and ethnicity”. The payment of the fine has another calculation: 50% of the maximum benefit limit of the General Social Security System, in addition to the salary difference itself. The amount of the fine is intended for the discriminated employee.

• As proposed by the project: in addition to the term “mandatory” appearing in the remuneration between genders that occupy the same position, the amount of the fine is doubled. The amount of the fine, in this case, goes to the treasury.

According to palace assistants, the fine would not remain with the woman for fear of encouraging possibly simulated conduct, since the value is very high. Which could also increase judicialization.

Yes but… Economists heard by Sheet found the proposal redundant, as the legislation already prohibits discrimination, and said that the measure risks harming women in the labor market, citing uncertainties such as the difficulty of measuring what the same function is.

The government also took advantage of the date to announce other initiatives, involving differentiated credit for women, programs for rural producers and for accelerating startups with female leadership, among others. See the initiatives here.

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Innovation in the fight against femicide

The brutal murder of her sister by her husband in 2019 motivated Israeli Lili Ben Ami to found the Michal Sela Forum, an NGO that supports technological initiatives to combat violence against women.

• The idea, she said in an interview with Sheetis to use innovation to revolutionize the fight against feminicide in the same magnitude of the transformation promoted by AirBnb and Facebook in the areas of tourism and communication, respectively.

To that end, she has already promoted three editions of the hackathon, a programming marathon with professionals trying to find solutions to a problem — in this case, gender violence. The meetings resulted in the development of three applications:

• A panic button that is triggered after a safe word and makes the device call predetermined contacts and activate the camera and microphone.

• One to report cases of violence without reporting to the police immediately. When three victims report against the same perpetrator, the tool suggests that they connect to go to the police station together.

• One that identifies a screen touch different from the owner of the cell phone to indicate that someone accessed the device without her knowing. The initiative is important because the aggressors usually invade the cell phones of the victims.

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Stock market has best day in two months

With investors optimistic about the new fiscal framework and the drop in interest rates, the Brazilian Stock Exchange had its best daily performance this Wednesday since November 11 of last year.

In numbers: the discharge was from 2.22%, at 106,540 points. the dollar retreated 1.02%, to BRL 5.14.

Which explains: excited about the downward trend in the yield curve, analysts are looking forward to the presentation in the next few days of the fiscal framework that will replace the spending cap.

• They interpreted as a positive sign the rapprochement between the Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad, and the President of the Central Bank, Roberto Campos Neto. Haddad said that the new proposal is ready and will be presented to government members.

• The expectation is that it will be presented to the public before the next BC meeting on interest rates, on March 21st and 22nd, with a minority of the market betting that the announcement would trigger an interest rate cut already at this meeting.

Even if the Selic decline does not occur this month, economists estimate that it should be lowered sooner than they had been predicting for a few weeks.

• The revision in the calculations was motivated by the improvement in the fiscal perspective along with signs that the economy is slowing down, in addition to a negative scenario in the supply of credit.

Highlights of the day: on the Stock Exchange, the downward trend in interest rates boosted retail and consumer stocks, sectors more sensitive to high rates.

• One segment that stood out beyond the others was education, with the companies’ actions reacting well to the ordinance of the Ministry of Education with the creation of a working group for changes in Fies.

Opinion:

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Tesla once again in the sights of the US agency

The NHTSA, the main regulator of the American automotive market, announced on Wednesday the opening of a preliminary investigation against Tesla over 120,000 Model Y cars, from 2023, after two reports about steering wheels that came loose while the driver was driving.

Understand: according to the agency, the vehicles had low mileage at the time of the accident and were delivered to the owners without the screw that connected the steering wheel to the steering column.

• The NHTSA investigation will determine the frequency of this defect and ascertain the manufacturing process associated with it.

Last month, the agency required a recall of 362,000 Tesla vehicles for a remote update to its self-driving software, for allowing the vehicle to “exceed speed limits or travel through intersections illegally or unpredictably.”

• The announcement of the term “recall” for a remote adjustment infuriated the automaker’s CEO, Elon Musk.

In an attempt to rekindle the demand for its cars, Tesla has been betting on price reductions. After having adopted this measure in its entry models, Model Y and Model 3, now Musk has lowered the prices of the top-of-the-line versions, Model S and Model X.