Supreme Court establishes thesis in the sense that Labor Courts are the competent jurisdiction to rule cases involving impacts on private pension contributions

In brief 

In a recent and important precedent on the subject, the Supreme Court consolidated the understanding that in the demands in which the granting of supplementary pension is not discussed, but only the impacts of installments pursued in a labor claim, Labor Courts are the competent jurisdiction to rule such cases.

More details

The subject used to generate controversy, since in the precedent established by the judgment of Extraordinary Appeal # 586.453, the Civil Courts were considered as the competent jurisdiction to rule cases filed against the private pension entities related to the pension’s complementation.

However, applying the distinguishing theory, the Justice Rapporteur, Luiz Fux, pointed out that the concrete case dealt with a different hypothesis, as the plaintiff claimed the “collection of the respective contributions to the private pension entity as a consequence of the levy on the labor rights claimed in this action, and not supplementary pensioning”.

In view of this reasoning, it was proposed to establish the following thesis for general repercussion purposes:

“It is incumbent upon the Labor Courts to judge lawsuits filed against the employer in which it is intended the recognition of amounts of a labor nature and the effects on the respective contributions to the private pension entity linked to it”.

We clarify that this decision will have impacts on a significant number of proceedings in progress, since the violation of the rules of competent jurisdiction generates absolute nullity of the lawsuit. And, thus, we understand that in the hypothesis explained above, the claims may be remitted to the Labor Courts, due to the general repercussion of the subject.