Lula grants a 9% wage increase to public employees in Brazil

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced Friday at the Planalto Palace a 9 percent salary increase for central government public employees starting in May, a measure frozen since 2016.

“To improve any public service, in any country in the world, you have to hire personnel for functions that only human beings can do,” Lula said in promulgating the law that the government had sent to Congress with the salary increase.

The President highlighted the negotiations between the federal public employees’ unions and the government that took office on January 1.

“Brazil is going through a process of reconstruction at several levels, and the public service is one of them”, said the President.

In a speech, the Brazilian President said that the readjustment sanctioned this Friday “may not be all people wanted, but it is essential in the face of the hurricane that Brazil has been a victim of in recent years”.

The Ministry of Management informed that there are about 560,000 active employees at all levels of the Executive Branch, including agencies and autarchies.