Published on April 24th, Law 14,553/23 brings in changes to the Racial Equality Act (Law 12,288/10). The new law creates an obligation to include employees' racial and ethnic information in corporate documents containing individualized information about them. The obligation also applies to administrative records directed to bodies and entities of the Public Administration.
The information must be filled out according to self-classification criteria based on previously delimited groups, that is, the employee must inform the employer of which ethnic and racial segment he identifies with.
According to the law, information about race must be included in the following documents:
- employment hiring and dismissal forms;
- work accident forms;
- registration done in the National Employment System (Sine);
- Annual Corporate Information Report (Rais);
- registration of insured persons and dependents with the National Institute of Social Security (INSS); and
- survey questionnaires conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).
Law 14,553/23 also provides that the IBGE will carry out surveys, every five years, to identify the percentage occupation of each racial and ethnic group employed in the public sector. This information will serve as a basis for creating and implementing public policies that promote racial equality.
The changes brought about by Law 14,553/23 also serve as support for companies to monitor racial equity issues and promote an environment aligned with ESG issues.
The new law does not specify when this information will start to be required from companies. We believe, however, that any document containing individualized information on workers prepared after the law enters into effect must include a specific field for filling in ethnic and racial information.
