The new Minister of Social Security, Carlos Lupi, signaled the direction of the new portfolio: finding ways to contribute to the informal job market. In a conversation with the press at the National Congress on Sunday (1st), moments before President Lula’s inauguration, the minister said he was thinking of creating differentiated rules so that informal workers could also contribute to Social Security. This Tuesday (3), Lupi officially took over the ministry.
According to the minister, the excess of informal work, which has come to be called “uberization of work”, in allusion to the self-employed who work for transport and delivery applications, is one of the priority issues to be resolved. The idea is that these 20 million workers pay some amount to Social Security to guarantee retirement and also reinforce social security coffers.
“We have a contingent of 20 million Brazilians in informal service, on their own. And the vast majority pay nothing to Social Security. So, if you charge a lower price for Social Security, giving a ceiling and a different limit, you have a potential collection that can greatly improve the situation of Social Security”, said Lupi.
This amount charged from informal workers, according to the minister, needs to be “fair”. “It has to be a lower price and also have a different limit on the pension amount. You can’t pay less to earn more, it has to be fair”.
2019 renovation
Lupi also criticized the pension reform, approved at the beginning of the last government, in 2019, and wants to review it. His proposal involves bringing together representatives of the government, employers’ unions, workers and retirees and analyzing the changes made.
“I think she was very harmful to the most fragile classes in society. To women, to the poor, to those who live in the depths of Brazil. And I think this needs to be analyzed from a social point of view. I think that Social Security today fulfills an income distribution role like any other body. There are 36 million Brazilians who receive some type of pension benefit”.
