Over a thousand people rescued from slave-like labor in Brazil in 2015
According to a ministry statement released to mark the National Day Against Forced Labor, which is observed on Thursday (Jan. 28), l40 operations were carried out last year to curb degrading labor. 
The Ministry of Labour and Social Security rescued 1,010 people working under conditions analogous to slavery in 2015. According to a ministry statement released to mark the National Day Against Forced Labor, which is observed on Thursday (Jan. 28), l40 operations were carried out last year to curb degrading labor.
According to the ministry, most of the slave-like labor practices in Brazil were found in urban areas, where 61% of the cases were concentrated (607 workers found in 85 inspection operations). In the 55 inspection visits carried out in rural areas, 403 workers were found in these conditions.
According to the chair of the National Labor Inspectors' Union, Carlos Silva, textiles and construction were the industries in which cases were most common. “More recently, we have also identified the problem in maritime activities, with degrading labor conditions found on cruise ships, which also use foreign labor,” he added.
For Silva, one of the modern challenges to addressing slavery is the strong political and economic influence of businesses. “The [anti-slavery] struggles reached urban areas, prompting a strong response from the capital, to the point of threatening two important tools available to us.” One of the threats, he said, is a bill pending before Congress that “narrows down the definition of slave labor, excluding all degrading labor and exhausting work hours. This is a serious setback.”
The other threat is the non-disclosure of a blacklist of businesses that exploit slave labor. “[Ricardo] Lewandowski, then-Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, claimed that there is no sufficient legal and constitutional basis to disclose the blacklist, a tool that has been internationally recognized by the UN as a best practice to be emulated by all countries in the fight to eradicate slavery,” the labor inspector said.
The most important advance in recent years according to Silva was the enactment of a constitutional amendment introducing forfeiture of properties where slavery has been proven to exist.
Carlos Silva thinks Brazil needs to subject the practice of exacting forced labor to heavier financial consequences, “up to a level that makes the risk of exploiting it for profit seriously unattractive to employers.”
“The existing fines on the practice are too mild, and the shortage of labor inspectors encourages many employers to take a chance on impunity,” he said.
According to the Ministry of Labor, the mining business concentrated 31.05% of the workers rescued last year, 313 workers. Construction accounted for 18.55% of the total (187 workers). Next were agriculture and livestock farming, with respectively 15.18% and 14.29% of the total number of people found working under slave-like conditions.
The 28th of January was chosen as Brazil's National Labor Inspection Auditors' Day and National Day Against Forced Labor in memory of two labor inspectors and a driver who were murdered in 2004 while investigating reports of forced labor in Unaí, Minas Gerais.
Translated by Mayra Borges
Fonte: Over a thousand people rescued from slave-like labor in Brazil in 2015
