Minister Luiz Philippe Vieira de Mello Filho, president of the TST (Superior Labor Court), stated that he intends to cut the salaries of court colleagues who miss sessions to give paid lectures on how to advocate in court.
“There are court ministers giving lectures on courses paid for by lawyers teaching how to advocate in court. This is completely unethical. It is completely conflicting,” said Vieira de Mello Filho, in an interview published this Tuesday (5).
“Not to mention that I intend to do something rudely, I intend to send a letter to all ministers asking them to be absolutely clear [sobre as palestras]. If there is no justification, it will impact the subsidy,” he said.
According to the president of the court, there is a course coordinated by the vice-president of the court, Guilherme Caputo Bastos. He says he also received slides from Minister Ives Gandra Martins Filho in a lecture on how to give oral arguments in court.
To Estadão, Vieira de Mello Filho sought to explain his speech about , during a speech in Brasília on May 1st – at the time, he said that “we reds have a cause, we have no interest”.
He says that this characterization was first made by minister Ives Gandra Filho –son of the conservative jurist Ives Gandra– in a course for lawyers. “And to whom does he attribute blue and red? To those who defend the Labor Court and those who defend a multi-business vision of labor law”, said the president of the court.
Vieira de Mello Filho claims to have “brought upon himself” the “beating” by repeating the characterization made by Gandra Filho. “I’m saying: if red is defending the right to work and what the Constitution attributes to us as competence, then so be I.”
Also in the interview, the president of the TST rejected banning courses and lectures, but said he hopes to regulate this in a code of conduct. He stated that he has asked ministers not to offer paid lectures to “economic segments” that generate, according to him, a “generalized conflict”.
“For me it’s this: do you want to give a talk? You can do it, just tell me where and who will pay,” he said.
In an interview with SheetVieira de Mello Filho had already paid judges, to allow the parties to a case to request the judge’s impeachment due to conflict of interest.
“You gave a talk to this company, you received this, you received that, so I don’t want you to judge my case, I want you to consider yourself a suspect”, he stated.
He also recognized that the Master scandal, which has so far involved at least two Supreme Court judges, has an impact on the judiciary as a whole, and defended that ministers should not judge cases brought by relatives’ offices.
“In 2023, they did not approve [a proposta de dar transparência às palestras]. I took the proposal and it was not approved by one vote. It could be approved and perhaps we wouldn’t even have to experience many of the situations we encounter today,” he said.
