Administration Bill Would Exempt Companies from Disabled Worker Quota System

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Bolsonaro’s government has submitted a bill to Congress that virtually eliminates the policy of quotas for people with disabilities or in rehabilitation. PL6.195/2019 enables companies to substitute hiring with the payment of two monthly minimum wages.

On Tuesday, December 3rd, International Disabled Persons Day, a meeting in the Chamber of Deputies is expected to have defined a strategy to halt the bill and bring down the urgency with which it is being processed.

For the vice president of AMPID (National Association of Prosecutor’s Office Members for the Defense of the Rights of Disabled and Elderly Persons), the deputy prosecutor general of labor Maria Aparecida Gurgel, the bill is harmful for people with disabilities. “It disconfigures all the affirmative action that is to reserve positions,” she says.

The project also introduces other changes in relation to quotas, such as double counting when hiring a worker with severe disability, and the inclusion of trainees in this verification.

“This rule [of severe disability] seems good because people with severe disability have greater difficulties in being included but at the end of the day, who will say if it is a severe or moderate disability?”, says Tabata Contri, of Talento Incluir, a company that provides consulting for inclusion.

The Ministry of Economy says the set of changes should benefit 1.25 million workers.

The monthly revenue, in the case of companies that do not meet the quota, will be paid into an account of the federal government, which will provide programs of physical and professional rehabilitation. The creation of this recovery policy for work was already provided for in Provisional Measure 905, which introduced the “yellow-green” program to encourage employment.

The percentage of rehabilitated or disabled workers remains the same and is compulsory for companies with 100 or more employees.

Source: Folha S. Paulo