At the end of June, environmental workers went on strike after the federal government left the negotiating table where they were discussing demands including restructuring the career path.
By: Opinião Socialista Editorial Office
Opinião Socialista interviewed Jerônimo Carvalho Martins, member of the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio), member of the Association of Environmental Career Servants of the State of São Paulo and Paraná and of the board of directors of the National Association of Environmental Specialist Career Servants.
What is the status of the environmental workers’ strike? What is the movement demanding?
Jerônimo – We tried to initiate a dialogue with the government, which began in August last year when we presented our proposal for career restructuring, which is a proposal that has been discussed since 2015.
It is not simply a matter of salary adjustment or salary recomposition. The proposal seeks to correct distortions between positions. There is a very big difference in the pay structure of the environmental analyst compared to the environmental technician and the technician compared to the assistant, which are three positions that exist within this career. To give you an idea, a technician earns less than 50% of what the analyst earns and, sometimes, performs very similar functions.
We want to change the proportions of total remuneration. Today, about half of the salary is a bonus. If the government wants to retaliate against us, they will lower the bonus. We want to change the proportion, putting our basic salary at 70% of our total pay.
What are the other demands?
There is another issue, which is the frontier indemnity, which all those who work on near the country’s borders have. We are also subject to various risks and the precarious conditions present in border areas. For example, a worker who is in Cabeça do Cachorro [area located in the extreme northwest of Brazil, State of Amazonas, in the border region with Colombia and Venezuela], on the border with Bolivia and in remote places, lives and works in an extremely challenging environment, it is very complicated to stay on as a civil servant in those areas.
We are also demanding a bonus for risky aspects of the job. We are subject to a series of risks, including confrontations with environmental offenders, which in practice often means exchanging fire. Our jobs put our health at risk. Sometimes we are involved in firefighting as well, among other dangers.
We are also asking that the job me made more competitive, because as the career is very outdated, there is high turnover and people leave. When another opportunity arises, workers often leave this job for a different another career.
And in the last months, how have the negotiations with the government been going?
Actually, in fact, there was no negotiation. We sent this proposal in August and the employees of the Brazilian Institute of the Environment (Ibama) were irritated by the slowness of the process and the lack of response from the federal government. That is why they started a movement, refusing to go to inspection operations in the Amazon, which is a kind of voluntary recruitment. ICMBio inspectors and other groups of civil servants also joined this movement.
What was discovered in this process? We discovered that, between January and February, the Ministry of Management and Innovation in Public Services did not even know about our proposal, had not even looked at the document. Now, the Ministry [says] it is working with the budget ceiling.
Does the strike affect environmental licensing work?
Yes, the strike affects all these jobs. It also affects the personnel who grant oil licenses and who work with timber exports.
Does it also affect emergency events, such as forest fires?
No. When we started the strike, now, on July 1, after much waiting and attempts at dialogue, we presented a document to the government that listed those activities that we considered essential. In the case of environmental emergencies, we respond to 100% of the incidents. The environmental license for an undertaking is not an emergency, it is essential. It can wait. It is not life-threatening.
We strongly advocate for the work we do, despite poor working conditions and salaries.
You have talked a lot about the collapse of the environmental area if the demands of the category are not met. What would this collapse be?
There is a huge outflow of [environmental] employees to other careers. There is no incentive to stay in certain places that are more complicated, as is the interior of the Amazon.
There is still the issue of personnel who are about to retire and there are no plans to replace those who are retiring. But there is no point in participating in a selecion process if the career is not attractive. That is where the problem lies. That is why we are fighting.
With so many personnel leaving, we are beginning to see a massive outsourcing, through the hiring of temporary environmental agents. Temporary agents are often subject to more external pressures.
How do you compare the situation of the employees with the previous government in relation to the current one?
We have to be careful and make distinctions. Under the last government, there were people under threat, colleagues who were being persecuted, moral harassment. There were colleagues who were fired for no just reason. I saw it happen. There were civil servants being wiretapped. Servants were dismissed from positions of trust because they refused to do what certain managers told them to do. A civil servant who had a cattle seizure operation in the Serra do Cachimbo Biological Reserve canceled because the director at the time said it wasn’t necessary.
What do we see happening now? The treatment we expected was different. Yet, with the forces with which it [the government] now works to manage its mandate, we couldn’t have expected much different.
And that’s where the role of the social movement comes in: to demand. Our agenda is the environment, which is a right of the population as a whole. We’re not just working on our labor rights. We’re continuing to exert pressure. Even now, last Friday (19/07), in Santarém (PA), during an event with Minister Marina Silva, our colleagues were demonstrating in favor of the career issue and were prevented from entering the building [where the minister was].
We’re still fighting. Because for us there is a budget limit, but for others the limit is quite different.
Article published in www.opiniaosocialista.com.br, 25/7/2024.
