STF has a rating of 5 to 2 for suspension from the nursing flooring; trial goes till friday

Score can still change; ministers vote on Luis Roberto Barroso’s decision

With the dissenting votes of ministers André Mendonça and Kassio Nunes Marques, the STF (Federal Supreme Court) records a score of five to two in favor of suspending the national nursing floor, as decided by minister Luis Roberto Barroso.

The court analyzes, in a virtual plenary session, whether Barroso’s decision that determined the suspension of the law that established a minimum remuneration for nurses and nursing assistants and technicians “until it is clarified” the financial impact of the measure for states and municipalities and for hospitals.

Following Barroso’s vote were ministers Ricardo Lewandowski, Alexandre de Moraes, Dias Toffoli and Cármen Lúcia. Ministers Edson Fachin, Rosa Weber, Gilmar Mendes and Luiz Fux still need to vote.

The trial, however, will only end on Friday (16), and the ministers can modify their votes or interrupt the voting. In the virtual plenary, each member of the Supreme casts their vote on the platform, for a specified period of time.

The norm approved by Congress fixed the minimum salary of R$ 4,750 for nurses. Nursing technicians should receive 70% of this amount, and nursing assistants and midwives, 50%.

Since deciding to suspend the floor, Barroso has reiterated that his decision aims to create, in a consensual way, a source of funding that makes it possible to comply with the law.

“My position is that the establishment of a floor for nursing and other health professionals is very fair. Therefore, I am committed to making this floor possible”, said Barroso after the STF session last Thursday (8).

“[Mas] My view and that of many is that, without building a source of funding, it would be very difficult to get this salary floor off paper”, he argued. According to Barroso, there was a real and imminent risk of general non-compliance with the law.

“Many hospitals were already dismissing in anticipation because of the difficulty in meeting the floor. Important social works warned that they were going to close. The Santas Casas, if they managed not to close, were already signaling a reduction in service. The SUS partner hospitals waved mass layoffs,” said the minister.

The minister’s decision was criticized by President Jair Bolsonaro (PL), who said that the suspension was taken on a “personal whim”.

“A person who was chosen by Dilma Rousseff to be a minister of the Supreme Court contradicts unanimity, 594 parliamentarians and a president, in my opinion, on his personal whim. You shouldn’t get involved in these things, in my opinion, it’s not his action, that’s not it, there’s nothing unconstitutional about it,” Bolsonaro said during a Saturday interview with the Correio Braziliense newspaper.

“I don’t know how they’re going to vote [no plenário virtual] the cassio [Nunes Marques] or André Mendonça, I put [esses ministros] inside, but I think they should be on the side of the workers”, he added, citing the members of the STF who were appointed by the president.

According to Mendonça, despite the peculiarities of the case at trial, the Supreme Court’s precedents go against Barroso’s vote.

According to the minister, in similar cases, the STF recognized the constitutionality of the national salary floor for professionals in the public teaching profession of basic education and that, although the law on the salary floor of community health agents is still pending judgment, “there is no decision news (…) that has determined the suspension of its effectiveness”.

The action to suspend the law was presented to the Supreme Court by the CNSaúde (National Health Confederation), which represents hospitals and establishments in the area.

The entity’s lawyer, Alexandre Pacheco Bastos, stated that the dominant reality in the country is not that of state-of-the-art hospitals in capitals such as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, but that of indebted establishments in the interior and “of the more than 825 municipalities where the respective Santa Casa is the only health equipment available to the population”.

“These institutions, as is well known, already have accounts that are quite affected by the delay in the SUS payment table”, said the lawyer.

Source: Leaf