ILO: Fight against slave labor in Brazil may face setback

In a statement made today (Oct. 19), the International Labor Organization (ILO) said that the Brazilian government's decision to change the definition of slave labor “interrupts a successful trajectory that turned Brazil into a role model and a global leader in the fight against slave labor.” The organization also criticized the change in inspection rules and how blacklists with the names of criminal employers were released.

The branch of the United Nations (UN) in charge of protecting working conditions worldwide, ILO argues that the new norm may undermine and restrain law enforcement efforts in labor, leaving “a portion of the Brazilian population even more fragile, unprotected, and vulnerable.”

Since Monday (16), when it was made public, the law has met with criticism from trade organizations and social movements that believe the move violates both international conventions subscribed by the country and Brazil's own legislation.

Under Brazilian law, slave-like labor consists of subjecting an individual to degrading working conditions (i.e. violation of fundamental rights or risks to the health and life of workers) or exhausting work days (excessive effort or work overload leading to health issues or death risks), forced labor (keeping an individual at work through fraud, geographic isolation, threats, and physical or psychological violence) and debt bondage (forcing workers to illicitly incur in a debt and binding them to it).

The new law, however, only regards as slavery the activities carried out under coercion or restriction of workers' liberty to come and go. These circumstances, ILO argued, could only be detected if monitoring agents found armed guards limiting the movement of workers or if they discovered that their documents were being confiscated by employers.

The regulation also changes the rules for blacklisting companies involved in slave-like labor. Up to last week, the so-called slave labor dirty list was made public every six months by the Ministry of Labor. Blacklisted were the names of all employers found by inspectors to break the law and those who were no longer allowed any form of appeal. The new piece of legislation, in turn, stipulates that the Ministry of Labor must approve the inclusion of offending employers on the dirty list and decide how the disclosure of the list should be carried out.

According to ILO, the possible developments of the new rule may be studied by an expert committee at the organization. Also mentioned was the risk that the changes may prevent Brazil from meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on the eradication of slave-like labor by 2030.

Legal enhancement

On Monday (16), the Ministry of Labor argued that the regulation will enhance government efforts and bring legal security. “The fight against slave labor is among the state's constant public policies, and has received all the administrative support from the ministry, including concrete results in terms of the number of people rescued and the inhibition of illicit practices of this nature, which constitute an offense to the most basic principles of dignity of a human being,” the note reads.

Translated by Fabrício Ferreira