STF judges FGTS correction; Barroso changes vote and proposes savings from 2025 – 11/09/2023 – Market

The president of the STF (Supreme Federal Court), Luís Roberto Barroso, resumed this Thursday (9) the judgment of the action on the review of the FGTS (Service Time Guarantee Fund) with a change in his previous vote.

According to the change proposed by the minister-rapporteur, only deposits made from 2025 onwards would have at least the remuneration of savings. In the previous vote, he had argued for the measure to become valid after the publication of the trial minutes.

According to Barroso, the measure responded to a request from Caixa Econômica Federal and it was considered that there would not be time to adapt the change to the 2024 Budget forecasts. Minister André Mendonça, who had also voted on the issue, followed the change in reporter.

Ministers must decide whether the correction of the Guarantee Fund, currently at 3% per year plus TR (Referential Rate), is constitutional or not.

The request made in ADI (Direct Action of Unconstitutionality) 5,090 is for this fee to be declared unconstitutional.

It also suggests that it be replaced by an inflation index, which could be the INPC (National Consumer Price Index) or IPCA-E (Broad National Consumer Price Index – Special).

The FGTS is a linked account that accumulates deposits made by employers in favor of workers.

The trial on the matter began in April this year, but was interrupted after a request from Minister Kassio Nunes Marques, who asked for more time to analyze the case.

The issue is sensitive for the federal government. At the request of representatives of the Lula (PT) administration, Barroso had already postponed the return of this trial for the first time, from the middle of last month to this week.

The government and trade unions wanted more time to reach an agreement and asked the president of the Supreme Court for at least 30 days, with the aim of finding a negotiated solution to the impasse involving workers’ deposits.

The minister of AGU (Attorney General of the Union) Jorge Messias went so far as to say that the idea is for a solution to be constructed and presented to the Supreme Court this year.

The government’s proposal was to guarantee at least inflation for the amounts deposited in the fund, which would please at least some of the trade unions. The problem lies in the correction of retroactive values, a desire of workers’ representatives, but which the federal government wants to avoid.

For central companies, payment of retroactive payments could be made in installments, which would alleviate some of the government’s difficulties.

According to Messias, the government’s concern was to reconcile the demands of workers to ensure the maintenance of the purchasing power of values ​​in the FGTS (with correction for inflation) and the needs of the SFH (Housing Financial System), resources for home ownership .

“We understand that the Guarantee Fund has a hybrid function, which is to guarantee worker insurance in the event of unemployment or retirement, but it is also necessary to make it compatible with the other essential functions of the fund, such as housing financing, basic sanitation and urban infrastructure”, explained the minister.

The case reached the Supreme Court in 2014, after a study commissioned by the Solidariedade party and Força Sindical showed considerable losses to the worker. At the time, the survey showed that the correction of values ​​brought a loss of 88.3% to the money deposited in the FGTS from 1999 to 2013.