The Brazilian Ministry of Labor and Employment (MTE) informed that the Transparency Reports of companies with more than 100 employees will be made available via the Emprega Brasil Portal on March 21st.
The MTE also highlighted that after these reports are published, the deadline for companies to publish their reports on their websites, for access not only by their employees, but by the general public, remains until 03/31/2024.
In view of this, and with the intention of mitigating the potential risk of damage from the information that will be disclosed in these reports, and negative publicity, several companies and associations have already moved to avoid this obligation, presenting the following actions to the Brazilians Courts:
1. ADIs in the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court: The National Confederation of Industry and the National Confederation of Commerce, Goods, Services and Tourism proposed Direct Actions of Unconstitutionality (ADIs – Brazilian Acronym) with a request for precautionary measure, to evaluate the constitutionality of points of the Law of Equality (“Law 14,611/23”), the entities claim, among other things, that the requirement to publish reports, which do not reflect the factual reality of companies, causes unfair reputational damage.
The ADIs have already been distributed, but remain pending judgment, thus, for now, companies assisted by these Confederations are still subject to the publication obligation.
2. Writs of Mandamus in the Brazilian Labor Courts: Some Associations and Companies even filed Writs of Mandamus in the Brazilian Labor Court with requests for early protection to exclude the obligation to publicize the Transparency Reports, alleging an offense against the LGPD and CADE, without success until this moment; and
3. Early Protection Action against the Union in the States Federal Courts: Two drugstore chains obtained the first injunctions exempting them from providing labor and salary information to the federal government through the salary transparency report and to publicize the Transparency Reports. These injunctions were granted in the Federal Courts in the States of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. To date, this is the most effective measure found to prevent the duty to publicize the Transparency Reports.
We recommend that companies that choose to file lawsuits do so as soon as possible, as the deadline for publishing the Salary Transparency Report remains March 31, 2024 (next week).
The Labor Area of Feijó Lopes Advogados are available to assist companies in these actions and in the next steps to avoid the obligation to publicize their Transparency Reports.
