CLAYTON LEVY
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Professor Cláudio Salvadori Dedecca, author of the study: government manipulates information to stigmatize civil servants |
The pension reform should fully affect public policies in the areas of health, education and security. The assessment is made by economist and professor at the Unicamp Institute of Economics, Cláudio Salvadori Dedecca, who prepared a study on the consequences of the reform for public employment. The work reveals that, contrary to what the federal government claims, in planning and control occupations, the operational core of public policies, remuneration for the public sector is lower than that earned in the private sector.
“Teachers, doctors, nurses and administrators receive less in the public sector than in the private sector, despite having, on average, longer service time and better qualifications”, says the economist. According to him, the examples of high remuneration given by the government constitute an exception and not a rule. “There is a clear manipulation of information by the government with the aim of stigmatizing public employment,” says Dedecca.
The study shows, for example, that the average salary of teachers in public higher education is R$5,2, while surgeons, dentists and nurses in the public network earn, on average, R$2,5 per month. “These values cannot be classified as privileges”, says the economist. The work also shows that, despite paying less than the private sector, the public sector has professionals with a higher level of qualification. In the public sector, for example, 23% of employees have a higher education degree, compared to just 6,5% in the private sector. In management positions, this number rises to 42,2% in the public sector while the private sector stands at 28,6%.
According to him, by reducing retirement and signaling a drop in wages, the government will cause the disruption of public employment and, consequently, of social policies in which the employee acts as an essential element. “There is a set of social policies, such as health, education and security, in which human resources play a decisive role”, observes Dedecca. “In a car manufacturer, machines do most of the work, but in a hospital or university, the doctor and professor cannot be replaced by equipment,” he explains.
In the economist's opinion, social policies in the area of health will be one of the most affected. “With these remuneration conditions, it will be difficult to attract doctors to distant regions in the interior of the country, precisely where there is a greater need for this type of care,” he says. This will increase the overload on university hospitals and health centers in larger municipalities. As an example, Dedecca cites the case of the Family Health program, which aims to provide direct care to the population. “With this pension policy, no professional will be interested in this type of work,” he says.
In the case of public universities, the scenario is also worrying. “At Unicamp alone, the government's fallacious and truculent action and the approval of the reform should precipitate the retirement of approximately 400 teachers, that is, 20% of the teaching staff”, warns Dedecca. According to him, public universities are expected to lose, in a short space of time, a considerable portion of their research and teaching potential.
In his study, the economist shows that professors and technical/administrative staff at state universities in São Paulo receive average salaries lower than those earned by similar occupations in large companies in the automobile, financial and retail sectors. “It is worth noting that university professors in the public network are, for the most part, holders of a doctorate degree, with internships in international academic and research institutions, which is not common in senior positions in large private institutions.”
Furthermore, according to Dedecca, in the case of public higher education professors, career progression is slow and depends on individual and institutional investments in research and teaching with long-term results. “This means that most teachers have the only possibility of working in institutions of this nature”, she explains.
The government's false arguments
The study by professor Cláudio Salvadori Dedecca also demonstrates that, contrary to what the federal government claims, spending on retirement and pensions is not high in Brazil, when compared to other countries. Data from the World Bank and the International Labor Organization (ILO) show that the country spends just over 2% of GDP on retirement and pensions. The average is small when compared to countries like Chile (6%), Argentina (4%), Italy (15%), Japan (5%) and the United States (7%). Only Mexico (0,5%) and Korea (1%) spend less than Brazil.
The slow evolution of federal social spending becomes even more evident when compared to the meteoric trajectory of government financial expenditure. According to data from IPEA, in nominal values, social spending varied from R$60 billion in 1995 to R$150 billion in 2000, while financial expenditure jumped from R$100 billion to R$almost R$400 billion in the same period. The study also reveals that in the period from 1995 to 2001, while social contributions rose from 10% to 13% of GDP, federal social spending increased from 12% to 14% of GDP.
For Dedecca, pension reform forces the government to give up one of the main wealth redistribution instruments of 20th century capitalism, which is the simple distribution public pension fund. “It (the government) gives up part of the fund in favor of the private sector, so that it can increase its level of profitability”, he says. Furthermore, according to the economist, the government privileges financial interests and increases restrictions on the resumption of growth by transferring part of its spending and demand creation capacity to the private sector.
“The government works with the expectation that the financial sector will use these resources to finance public works, but there is no guarantee that this will happen,” says Dedecca. For him, this is strange reasoning. “If the government expects the financial sector to use this money to finance public works, why doesn’t it use the resources directly, without passing them on to the financial sector first?”, he asks. “The government is shooting itself in the foot.”
According to Dedecca, the country currently has something like R$240 billion in assets in pension funds that could be applied directly to public investments. For him, the private sector is unlikely to invest resources in infrastructure projects because the return is low and long-term. “The money is more likely to be used to build shopping centers and theme parks because they are quick-return investments.” As a result, according to the economist, it is unlikely that the current government will be able to fulfill its campaign promise, which is to attack the country's serious social problems.
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