Providing decent working conditions in Brazil a challenge, experts say

Providing decent working conditions in Brazil can be challenging, but it is the necessary avenue to tackle slave-like labor. The conclusion was drawn by specialists heard by Agência Brasil amid the large number of workers rescued in recent months.

In the view of Labor Prosecutor and Regional Coordinator for the Fight Against Slave Labor Tiago Muniz Cavalcanti, the plight must be addressed on two fronts: prevention and repression.

“When we talk about prevention, there’s primary prevention, when the crime [of slave-like labor] has not yet occurred, and secondary prevention, when we need to protect the victim after it’s committed, reverse vulnerability factors, and bring them to decent work so they’re not targeted yet again. Both primary and secondary forms of prevention are our big bottleneck,” he said.

It is the duty of the state, he argued, to implement public policies to promote the enforcement of social rights, including decent labor, especially among potential victims. “What we do everyday—as state and prosecutors, as well as society—is to try and reverse all the vulnerability factors targeting the people, to slash exploitation levels,” said Cavalcanti.

In a similar vein, Executive Director of the Institute of the National Pact for the Eradication of Slave Labor (InPacto) Marina Ferro says the COVID-19 pandemic increased unemployment and the amount of precarious labor on offer.

“Fighting slave labor is about giving people opportunities and reducing inequality. The more unequal our society is, the more precarious such circumstances become. If we take people out of poverty and hunger and create decent opportunities, this issue tends to be less frequent,” she affirmed.

The ripples of slavery in Brazil are still present, she noted, because after the emancipation of slaves no social integration policy was put in place for them. “That’s why we’re still a very unequal nation, where vulnerability is perpetuated and human beings are not treated with dignity,” she said.

Under Brazilian law, slave-like labor is described as any forced activity carried out in exhausting working hours or under degrading conditions with significant restriction to a worker’s freedom of movement.

Another form of contemporary slavery recognized as such in Brazil is debt bondage, when workers freedom of movement is reduced by their employer under the allegation that the victim owes a certain amount of money.

Rescue operations

Since 1995, inspections and rescues have been conducted in Brazil by labor auditors in collaboration with the Labor Prosecution Service, the Federal Police, the Federal Highway Police, the Federal Prosecution Service, and the Public Defender’s Office, among other agencies.

Such crackdowns have been on the rise in recent years. By the beginning of March, law enforcement is reported to have rescued 523 victims of slave-like work. In 2022, 2,575 people were reported to face contemporary slavery, a third more than in 2021.

Brazilian labor prosecutors and the International Labor Organization have also unveiled the Observatory for the Eradication of Slave Labor and Human Trafficking, which offers facts and figures on labor policies.

Prosecutor Cavalcanti pointed out that, according to the Walk Free Foundation, Brazil had about 150 thousand enslaved people in 2014. “The most recent figures show that we now have 370 thousand. In other words, the amount of enslaved people has more than doubled,” he said, explaining that the average number of rescues is just over 2 thousand every year.

The precarization of labor

According to Cavalcanti, the public policy agenda of the governments after the impeachment of former President Dilma Rousseff failed to assist low-income families and made poverty levels all the more severe. As a result, the number of workers willing to submit to extremely poor conditions has skyrocketed.

“We saw the stagnation of the land reform policy and an escalation in both social inequality and authoritarian power relations. Coronelismo has returned with much greater force. Social protection has become more precarious, as labor legislation has become relaxed and de-regulated, along with social security. We have witnessed the intense uberization of labor relations, which was further encouraged by previous administrations,” he argued.

In the view of Luiz Felipe Brandão de Mello, secretary for Labor Inspection at the Ministry of Labor and Employment, the previous government’s narrative—according to which “work is crucial, not just rights”—intensified the precarization of employment in Brazil.

“There’s a wide range of factors contributing to this landscape. It’s unbelievable that we’re still discussing slave labor in Brazil in 2023. This is not the responsibility of an institution alone, but a concern of the entire society, and should lead to a great mobilization,” he argued.

The productive chain

Supported by a group of corporations in Brazil, InPacto is among the private sector’s institutional responses to the problem. The institute is active in the search for solutions for global productive chains and in the prevention of slave-like labor.

One of its tools is the InPacto Vulnerability Index, which enables decision makers to gauge the risk of slave labor in the country, so employers can work to provide decent working conditions in their facilities.

According to Ferro, “companies will be more and more required to account for the inspection of their entire chain. They won’t be able to say ‘we hired a third party; we have no responsibility.’ Saying ‘we didn’t know’ will no longer be possible. Companies will have to be careful in the future,” she stated.

Agribusiness is the sector most frequently involved in cases of slave labor. From 1995 to 2022, of the 57,772 rescued, 29 percent worked in cattle raising, 14 percent in sugarcane production, and seven percent in forest production.

“We need a cultural transformation, especially in the way we think about production. […] As legislation becomes more and more strict both domestically and globally, reputation is likely to play an even more important role, so businesses lagging behind will be forced to catch up later on.”

Instruments of repression

As for efforts to repress slave labor, Prosecutor Cavalcanti believes that, “to a certain extent,” Brazil serves as an international role model. “We have key instruments, such as the Grupo Móvel, with a task force to combat slave labor with a blacklist.” He recalled that, thanks to a recent court ruling, the crime of slave labor in Brazil cannot be time-barred.

The last game-changing action against slave labor was implemented under erstwhile President Rousseff (2011–2016), following the constitutional amendment which stipulates the expropriation of land from culprits.

“We must keep in mind that the government didn’t take action out of nowhere. These instruments were created because Brazil was required by other nations to do something about it,” he declared.

The slave-labor blacklist is the register of employers fined by the Ministry of Labor for submitting workers to slave-like conditions. Names are blacklisted after a final administrative decision. The list is published every six months, with the last one made public in October last year.