Union tax: Government and unions plan return to mandatory contribution

unions

The proposal is that the negotiation contribution be approved at the workers’ meeting

Brasilia – The federal government and the union centrals plan the return of the mandatory union contribution, in the form of a negotiation fee, provided that it is approved in the assembly. The proposal under study brings the possibility for each union to set a compulsory rate to be paid by union members and non-union members. The information is from the Folha de SP website..

Today, the Law allows each worker to ask not to pay the negotiation fee, as well as the union dues. The plan of the government and the centrals is to end this possibility of individually exempting themselves from the contribution. The decision taken in assembly would apply to all.

The main argument of the centrals is that the benefits of the negotiations made by the unions apply to the whole category, and not only to the union members. Thus, the same should happen with the rate that finances its activities.

Before the labor reform, the main source of funding for trade unions was union dues. In this case, the rate was defined by law and compulsorily deducted from the salary of every worker with a formal contract.

The contribution difference is that it will be defined by the assemblies. Thus, it will be up to each category to define whether it wants a business contribution or not, as well as its value.

The recreation of a form of funding for trade unions is a campaign promise by President Lula (PT). The Ministry of Labor did not issue a statement on the matter.

A joint note from the centrals disagrees with the comparison between the old union tax and the new business contribution.

“It has no relation and does not even allow a comparison with the old union tax, since it is defined in a meeting in a widely publicized and democratic way”,

say the entities in a joint note.

The division of resources is still under discussion. The negotiation rate that exists today is not shared by the unions, who keep all the resources.

In the case of the old union tax, unions kept 60% of the amount collected and the rest was divided between federations, confederations and centrals. The claim at the moment is that the unions keep 75% of the new negotiation contribution.

The proposal of the union centrals under discussion in the government also brings changes to the rules of union representation.

The main one is the creation of an indicator that will measure the density of each organization that represents workers. Only entities that reach a minimum level will benefit from union prerogatives for collective bargaining.

The density will be calculated from two axes: one of representation, with a weight of 80%, and another of representativeness, with 20%.

According to the proposal, the first axis will calculate “the ratio between the number of workers in the entity’s representation base over the total number of workers protected by conventions or collective agreements in the areas of negotiation“.

Representativeness, on the other hand, will be the “ratio between the total number of members over the total number of workers in the entity’s representation base”.

The centrals ask that the calculation of the indicator be in charge of the Chamber of Union Self-Regulation of Workers.

The purpose of creating the indicator is to value the unions that effectively negotiate improvements for their category.

“It is not enough to have an affiliated union, [as entidades] they have to work, provide negotiation services”,

affirmed the general secretary of Força Sindical, João Carlos Gonçalves, known as Juruna.

Another novelty proposed by the centrals is the creation of a union consortium. In this modality, two or more unions will be able to unite for a determined period of time, sharing attributions and resources, but will continue to exist individually.

Today, unions can merge with others or incorporate entities, but the centrals assess that the current system discourages these possibilities due to the risk of fragmentation of the unions.

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