Percentages, calculation base, what requires a technical report, why the two premiums don’t stack, and how they change overtime, vacation, 13th salary and FGTS.
Both premiums, in one sentence each
The unhealthy-work premium pays for exposure to a health hazard above the tolerance limit (noise, heat, chemical or biological agents), at 10% for the minimum degree, 20% for the medium and 40% for the maximum, under Brazil’s NR-15.
The hazard premium pays for risk to life: flammables, explosives, electricity, radiation and security work, among others set by regulation, at 30% of base salary, excluding premiums.
The two do not stack. When an employee qualifies for both, they choose the more favourable one (CLT, article 193, paragraph 2), and that choice has to be recorded.
The calculation base, where the confusion lives
The hazard premium applies to base salary, excluding bonuses, prizes and profit sharing. The unhealthy-work premium, by the wording of CLT article 192, applies to the minimum wage.
That minimum-wage base is the sensitive part: the Supreme Court’s Binding Precedent 4 forbids using the minimum wage as an index, yet the Court itself kept the criterion until another one is set, and case law keeps applying the minimum wage unless a collective agreement sets a different base, usually base salary.
The practical conclusion: check the base in the industry’s collective agreement before configuring payroll. It is the difference between paying 20% of the minimum wage and 20% of a salary three times larger.
None of it exists without a technical report
Entitlement depends on a technical report signed by an occupational physician or safety engineer, characterising the agent, the degree and the activity. Paying without it creates exposure on both sides: an inspection for the missing document and a dispute over the degree in court.
The report is also what supports removing the premium: once the agent is eliminated or neutralised (effective PPE, a process change), payment stops, and that has to be documented technically, not decided in a record screen.
The occupational risk and health programmes speak to that report, and eSocial receives the working-environment information that feeds special retirement. A mismatch between the report and eSocial is a guaranteed problem later.
Payroll effects, one by one
As habitual salary items, both premiums belong in the base for overtime, the night premium, paid weekly rest, vacation with its one-third, the 13th salary and FGTS, and they enter the social-security and income-tax bases.
On termination they are part of the proportional items. During a leave they follow the rule of the item itself: the premium tracks pay while exposure lasts and stops being owed when exposure ends.
The classic mistake is posting the premium as an isolated fixed item without flagging it as a base for other items. The payslip figure looks right and everything else is quietly wrong for months.
Configure once, apply always
In Avos the premium is configured with degree, base and validity period, and it already acts as a base for the rest: overtime, weekly rest, vacation, 13th salary and FGTS take it into account with no manual entry. The validity period is what lets payment stop on the date the technical report says exposure ended, with the history of why.