On the eve of the beginning of the Judiciary’s recess, the Attorney General of São Paulo, Paulo Sérgio de Oliveira e Costa, increased the number of people who need to be on duty during the weeks off.
In two resolutions published in the Official State Gazette on Wednesday (3), the attorney general doubled the amounts paid to prosecutors who work on weekends and off-hours, in addition to the amounts transferred to prosecutors who have a backlog of work.
In a note, the São Paulo company stated that it did not create new possibilities for payment to promoters and that “the repercussions [financeira] will be marginal and completely absorbed by the budget” — but without informing how much the measures will cost the public coffers.
In one of the resolutions, Oliveira e Costa determined that prosecutors who work shifts on Saturdays and Sundays, during judicial recess shifts or in Children’s Courts, will be entitled to receive R$5,300 in addition to the basic salary. If the work takes place on non-working days, during recess, payment will be R$2,600.
A resolution in force since 2018 already provided for extra payments for those who work on these days, but the amounts passed on to prosecutors were half of that determined by the prosecutor.
In another resolution, the determination was to increase from five to ten days of compensatory leave (days off converted into payment for the extra day of work) for promoters with backlog of work.
According to the understandings of the (Federal Supreme Court), the (National Council of Justice) and the CNMP (National Council of the Public Ministry), untaken compensatory leaves can be converted into cash payments that do not count towards the salary cap limit.
During Oliveira e Costa’s management, the MP-SP recognized, administratively, debts arising from the accumulation of functions in the period between 2015 and 2023, which resulted in one per prosecutor. Labor liabilities built on the basis of these retrospectives.
These amounts have been paid in stages, using surplus financial resources in cash, which, in practice, resulted in payments above the ceiling for most of the category.
With the measure, in September, the most recent data available on the MP-SP transparency portal, the average salary among members of the institution was R$58,800 — the constitutional ceiling is the salary of STF ministers, currently R$46,400.
A Sheet asked the MP-SP for explanations about the reasons that led the attorney general to grant benefit increases, but the note sent in response did not address this issue.
In the text, when commenting on the benefits, the MP-SP informed, in a note, that “as proven by the control bodies, it fully complies with the constitutional ceiling for the transfer of subsidies to members of the institution”.
The institution also states that “in relation to payments for services of a special nature, which are now carried out, according to the law, in a symmetrical way to what occurs in the Judiciary, the repercussion will be marginal and completely absorbed by the Budget”.
The MP-SP concluded the note by saying that “there was no expansion of the hypotheses” for extra payments — in other words, that it did not create new situations that could result in transfers to prosecutors.
