Once again, under the seductive label of “administrative reform”, a proposal appears in the National Congress that threatens to dismantle the Brazilian civil service. PEC 38/2025, approved by a special committee of the Chamber of Deputies, is a reckless project. It does not strengthen institutions serving citizens, does not value employees, and does not improve operational efficiency. Its real effect will be to worsen the precariousness of services and weaken those who provide them.
Reading the PEC reveals a clear diagnosis: everything converges to reduce rights, weaken careers and open up spaces for outsourcing and instability. It eliminates seniority bonuses, imposes careers comprising at least 20 development categories, prohibits readjustments and feedback and creates strict limits on personnel expenses, which make competitions and salary adjustments impossible. The result is predictable: fewer employees, lower wages and increasingly cut public services.
There is also the absurd figure of the “temporary civil servant”: civil servants who would enter through competitive examinations, but would be dismissed after ten years, without stability or labor rights. He is a precarious statutory worker and condemned to uncertainty. Added to this is the possibility of arbitrary extinction of positions and careers, the distortion of typical State functions and variable remuneration based on “productivity”, which eliminates parity and undermines support for pensions.
It should be emphasized that public examination, which guarantees merit, and stability, which preserves the technical independence of civil servants, are instruments of the democratic rule of law to immunize the administration against the influences of political parties and limit the recruitment of sponsored and physiological candidates. In this way, they serve the best interests of the Brazilian population.
They say the PEC does not affect current servers. But it is illusory to imagine that the dismantling of careers, the flattening of salaries and the strangulation of public pensions will not have an impact on everyone. It is a reform against the civil service and civil service that harms society, the vast majority of which depends on the State for access to health, education, security, justice, social security, social assistance, inspection, rural extension and many other fundamental services.
Given the foreseeable harmful consequences, it is worth asking: who is interested in this proposal? Certainly not to the population, who depend on quality public services, nor to the civil servants, who devote their lives to ensuring the functioning of the State. Thus, the PEC seems to respond to the desires of the private sectors who see public service as a commercial opportunity and appropriate the resources and infrastructure that belong to the Brazilian people. This is something that interests those who want a weak State, reduced to the logic of profit, without commitment to the collective interest.
Any administrative reform worthy of the name must seek modernization with appreciation. It must encourage merit without eliminating stability; promote training and development without destroying careers; correct distortions without extinguishing rights. It is possible to reform with responsibility and dialogue, but never at the expense of the public service and those who support it.
Faced with the seriousness of the risk represented by PEC 38/2025, we, at AFPESP, defend the union of all entities representing civil servants to demand the abandonment of this harmful proposal. This is why we fully support the Serving Entities Forum manifesto, which calls on federal MPs to vote against the proposal in plenary. After all, all the arguments I listed in this article show that rejecting it is an act of responsibility towards Brazil.
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