Congress enacts amendment on slavery

A constitutional amendment was enacted Thursday (June 5) establishing the seizure of properties where slave labor is found to take place. The bill has been pending in Congress for 15 years.

According to the head of the Human Rights Secretariat of the Presidency, Ideli Salvatti, “Brazil is one of the first countries to introduce constitutional provisions on the seizure of property where slavery has been verified.”

Under the new provisions, urban and rural estate where labor in near-slave conditions is detected will be expropriated and used for agrarian reform and affordable housing programs, at no compensation for the owner. The new law, however, will be of no practical consequence until its details are fully regulated – a process that is likely to be fraught with disputes on the concept of slave labor, the conditions for seizure, and the applicable legal remedies.

Speaking to Agência Brasil, Ideli Salvatti pondered that the regulation will probably be based on existing legal provisions. She quoted provisions of the Criminal Code that exposing others to forced labor or subjecting them to abusive work conditions and exhausting work hours is punishable by two to eight years' imprisonment. Salvatti expects that once the full rules are approved, there should be no retrogression.

The Human Rights minister instanced another policy that has been successful in inhibiting violations – the Ministry of Labor “black list” of employers with proven records of slave labor exploitation. Having their names on the list makes these companies ineligible to receive government funding. The list is updated twice a year, and currently 568 employers are blacklisted.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that a current 20 million people are exploited for forced labor worldwide, generating profits of $150 billion annually. This finding, according to Salvatti, is the central concern addressed by the new Brazilian amendment. With the property seizures imposing economic sanctions on perpetrators, the new policy is potentially more impacting. Indeed, strengthening actions to prevent and combat forced labor is the central theme of the 103rd Session of the ILO's International Labour Conference, which is taking place in Geneva, Switzerland between May 28 and June 12.

In Brazil, since 1995, 46,478 workers have been rescued from slavery by mobile teams consisting of labor inspectors, Federal Police, and Labor Prosecutors that conduct audits and detect the practice. In the past five years alone, about 2,700 workers were rescued following annual inspections at over 310 workplaces on average.

Translated by Mayra Borges

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