Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2015, published 105th ILC session (2016)

Social Policy (Basic Aims and Standards) Convention, 1962 (No. 117) - Brazil (Ratification: 1969)

Parts I and II of the Convention. Articles 2 and 5(2). Improvement of standards of living. Essential family needs. In its previous comments the Committee asked for information enabling it to ascertain how priority had been given to improving standards of living in the Government’s programmes to promote improvement of the living standards of the poorest sectors of the population. In its report, the Government mentions the initiatives taken under the Ministry for Social Development and Hunger Eradication, including the Water for All programme, the Technical Assistance and Rural Extension Service (ATER), the Programme for the Acquisition of Food through Family Farming, and the National Programme for Access to Technical Training and Employment (PRONATEC). With regard to essential family needs, the Government reports on the results of the Family Allowance Programme (Bolsa Familia) (PBF), which covers Brazil’s 5,570 municipalities and benefits some 14 million families. The PBF, which is part of the Brasil sem Miseria poverty eradication programme, consists in making direct money transfers to families all over the country that live in poverty and extreme poverty and have a per capita family income of less than 77 Brazilian reals (BRL) a month. Every month, the Federal Government deposits an amount for the families covered by the PBF. Each family has a magnetic card – preferably in the name of the woman – enabling the money to be withdrawn. The beneficiary families commit to vaccinating their children under 7 years of age and to medical care for women. Furthermore, minors and adolescents must be registered at school and must attend an education establishment. The Committee notes with interest the information supplied and welcomes the Government’s emphasis on the PBF, which signals progress in the application of the Convention. The Committee requests the Government to continue to send information on the impact of the measures which have been implemented to improve the standard of living of the population and ensure the essential needs of families.

Part IV. Article 12. Advances on wages. In the comments it has made since the ratification of the Convention, the Committee has asked for information on the measures taken or envisaged to set the maximum amounts and manner of repayment of advances on wages, in accordance with the Convention. The Government refers, in its report, to the first paragraph of section 462 of the Codification of Labour Laws which says that “employers shall make no withdrawals whatsoever from wages other than as a result of an advance or in the instances allowed by legal provisions or clauses of collective agreements”. The Government indicates that the legislation imposes no express limitation on the repayment of advances on wages, but recognizes that such an advance may be the sign of an inducement for a work situation akin to one of slave labour, depending on the specific circumstances and insofar as the freedom to end the work relationship is restricted until the wage advances have been repaid. The Committee requests the Government to provide examples of judicial decisions pertaining to situations involving wage advances. It also asks the Government to indicate whether any clauses of collective agreements have regulated the maximum amounts and manner of repayment of advances on wages.