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Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the Federal Supreme Court, accepted a complaint presented by the Attorney General of the State of Acre and annulled part of a ruling by the Superior Labor Court that attributed subsidiary responsibility to the Acre government for labor debts of an outsourced company.
When analyzing the case, the judge stated that the simple lack of payment of labor rights by the contracted company is not enough to automatically hold the public administration responsible. The understanding follows the line already consolidated by the STF that the public authorities cannot be treated as a direct guarantor of the obligations of these companies.
In the minister’s assessment, the State’s liability can only occur when there is concrete proof of repeated failures in monitoring the contract, in addition to demonstrating a link between this conduct and the loss suffered by the worker. Without these elements, according to Moraes, the conviction contradicts the Court’s binding jurisprudence.
Decision made by STF minister, Alexandre de Moraes/Photo: Reproduction
In the specific case, he concluded that negligence on the part of the State of Acre was not proven to be sufficient to justify the conviction. He also highlighted that liability cannot be based solely on the outsourced party’s default, the reversal of the burden of proof or generic allegations of deficiency in supervision.
With the decision, the section of the TST ruling that imposed subsidiary liability on the state government was revoked. The understanding opens space for the State to challenge, in the STF, other similar convictions based only on presumptions.
