Human Rights in Brazil - Slave Labor and Labor Exploitation

Slave Labor and Labor Exploitation

Slavery and labor situations like depression era company towns still exist in remote areas in Brazil like the Amazon (A fictional portrayal of such a town occurs in The Rundown). "Debt slavery" (where workers are forced to work to pay an ever-increasing debt) still exists in some rural areas, though it is illegal and the government actively fights against it. The "debt slavery" is particularly worrying in large sugar cane farms, since sugar cane is a raw material for Ethanol, a product that the Brazilian government is currently actively encouraging the production and research.

Slavery may seem like a quaint notion in a 21st century world, but that distinction is lost on up to 40,000 Brazilians who find themselves toiling for no real wages and can't leave the distant work camps where they live. Brazilian government officials and human rights activists call it slave labor, a condition they are aggressively trying to eradicate.

A special government task force established in 1995 says it freed 4,634 workers last year in 133 raids on large farms and businesses that rely on workers driven to take these jobs by hunger and the empty promises of labor recruiters. "Slavery is the tail end of a lot of abuse of poor people and workers in Brazil," said Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based policy center. "Bad treatment reaches over to abusive treatment to treatment that becomes virtual slavery."

In Brazil, it often works this way: A recruiter known as a "gato," or cat, plumbs the slums and other poor areas of the vast country and gets people to agree to jobs in distant places. Once separated from home and family, workers are vulnerable to all sorts of abuses, such as being told they owe money for transportation, food, housing and other services.

"This is known as debt bondage, which also fits official definitions of slavery," says Anti-slavery International, a lobbying group based in Great Britain. "A person is in debt bondage when their labor is demanded as the means of repayment for a loan or an advance. Once in debt they lose all control over their conditions of work and what, if anything they are paid, often making it impossible to repay and trapping them in a cycle of debt."

The United Nations International Labour Organization estimated there were between 25,000 and 40,000 Brazilians working under such conditions in 2003, the latest year for which it offered figures. Leonardo Sakamoto, the director of the human rights group Reporter Brasil, says he's certain there are still more than 25,000 slave laborers in Brazil. According to Anti-slavery International, the greatest number of slave laborers is employed in ranching (43%). That's followed by deforestation (28%), agriculture (24%), logging (4%), and charcoal (1%).

Though those figures are from 2003, Sakamoto says they still apply, with cattle ranches and sugar cane plantations among the top employers. But what may set Brazil apart are the government's attempts to wipe out the practice. One of Brazil's chief tools is a "Special Mobile Inspection Group" that consists of labor inspectors, federal police and attorneys from the federal labor prosecution branch. The group often raids workplaces, looking for abuses and laborers held against their will.

In 2007, the task force freed 5,999 workers, a record number. In 2003, the agency freed 5,223 laborers. Since the group's inception in 1995, it has freed 33,000 people. The former Labor Minister Carlos Lupi vowed in a recent interview with the state-run Brazilian news agency that efforts will be stepped up this year.