After ultimatum, union says 80% of striking civil servants will return to work

Last weekend (August 25 and 26) was the deadline for striking federal civil servants to either accept a 15.8% pay raise offered or get nothing.

Many different “categories” of federal employees are on strike and they are represented by different unions. The Ministry of Planning talked to around 30 separate labor unions over the weekend after a reported 180 rounds of negotiations since March that have so far been basically fruitless.

Hanging over everybody’s head is the August 31 deadline for amendments to next year’s budget.  Any salary raises will have to be in it. According to the Secretary of Labor Relations at the Ministry of Planning, Sérgio Mendonça, negotiations will be closed on Sunday and on Monday and Tuesday agreements reached must be signed.

The only area where even partial agreement has been reached is with federal university employees (these are tuition-free schools where most teachers and administrative personnel are civil servants. As they have passed competitive exams, most have tenure). The teachers are to receive salary raises varying between 25% and 40% and the number of salary levels in their career plan will be reduced from 17 to 13. That will cost the government R$4.2 billion. Administrative personnel will get an adjustment that will cost R$2.9 billion.

The offer the government has made to the other categories of civil servants will cost the treasury around R$12 billion in additional payroll costs over the next three years (the offer is a 15.8% salary increase over three years).

The total impact of this latest strike on the budget will be over R$18 billion.

The government says around 80,000 federal civil servants are on strike. The unions say the number is closer to 350,000. At least some employees in the following are on strike: Institute of Land Reform (“Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária – Incra”), National Health Institute and Disease Control (“Agência Nacional de Vigilância Sanitária –Anvisa”), National Archives (“Arquivo Nacional”), IRS (“Receita Federal”), the ministries of Health, Planning, Environmnet and Justice (“ministérios da Saúde, do Planejamento, do Meio Ambiente e da Justiça”), Federal Highway Patrol (“Polícia Rodoviária Federal – PRF”) and FBI (“Polícia Federal”).