When auditors from the Labor Ministry inspected Senator João Ribeiro's farm in 2004, they found 35 employees forced into working nearly 80-hour weeks under conditions described as "sub-human." Ribeiro, who was re-elected to the Senate in 2010, has been embroiled in a legal suit ever since, which will soon be heard by Brazil's highest court of law.
Workers had allegedly been brought to Ribeiro's farm attracted by the promise of a decent salary, but once they arrived they racked up debts with the management and were coerced into staying. Such practices are especially common in rural states along the Amazonian frontier like Para, where Ribeiro kept his country estates. Employers charge their laborers for food, housing, and equipment, withholding their wages until their debts are paid off. Workers are forced to keep long hours and safety regulations are ignored.
More recently, 24 workers were freed by a federal task force in the northeast Piaui state. The labourers were fed spoiled food, and forced to pay for their housing, transportation, and the tools they used for work.
According to Rogenir Costa, the head of Brazil programs for humanitarian agency Catholic Relief Services, there are between 25,000 and 40,000 slaves in Brazil. Most work in the cattle industry, but slaves also work in sugar cane fields, mines, and factories.
Workers are often recruited by fixers known as gatos. The gatos lure workers to farms, ranches, and factories where they are then coerced into working under illegal conditions, but as Costa noted, some workers follow their families into slavery because they have no other opportunities. She said 80 percent of these modern slaves are illiterate and 90 percent were already working by age 16.
Those who try to escape may be threatened with violence. A recent report from O Globo told the story of Daniel Moraes Ferreira, who worked in stonemasonry in the Amazonian state Matto Grosso. His employers were armed and patrolled the work site constantly. "When the police cars show up, the slaves are put in the brush and hidden. I couldn't leave the farm. How, with a .38 revolver threatening me? Anyone who leaves is beaten or shot," he said.
The problem is not confined to rural areas. Spanish high-fashion retailer Zara was denounced in August 2011 for its relationship with a Brazilian supplier that employed 14 Bolivians and one Peruvian in an illegal São Paulo "sweatshop." While Zara quickly ended its relationship with that supplier, the scandal was a reminder that multinationals that have outsourced work to Brazil still risk hiring subcontractors reliant on forced labor.
While most of Brazil's forced labor victims originate from poor states like Piaui, Tocantins, and Bahia, to a lesser extent Brazil is also a destination for labourers trafficked from other Southern Cone countries. Costa told InSight Crime that Bolivians and Peruvians are frequently employed in slave-like conditions in Brazil. This suggests that the gatos prey on migrant workers, who are particularly vulnerable to labor abuse.
Police are rescuing more workers from illegal conditions in a higher number of states, an encouraging sign that the government has successfully expanded their operations against slave labor. In 2010, according to a report from Brazil's Ministry of Labor and Employment (MTE), authorities rescued 2,628 workers. And according to Brazilian NGO the Pastoral Land Commission, in 2011 authorities freed slaves in 19 states, a number which had never risen about 15 before 2006. But even so, those who are rescued from slavery reportedly represent less than 10 percet of the total number of estimated victims.
Successful prosecutions are few and far between, which is partly why Senator Ribeiro's case may prove to be a landmark one, should the Supreme Court find him guilty of slave labor charges. Gulnara Shahinian, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on slavery, has urged the country to pass legislation allowing the expropriation of land used for forced labor, which so far has not occured.
Many offending employers operate with relative impunity even once they are caught. The statute of limitations for slavery cases often expires by the time cases are processed in the Labor Courts, which handle labor violations. This, along with relatively weak sentences, means employers in certain industries and regions have little incentive to play by the rules.
When China hosted the Summer Olympics, the government flagrantly violated human rights of citizens in order to put a “happy face” on the country for those who attended and watched the games. Forced relocations and misappropriation of water supplies are but two examples. The only unintended beneficial side effect was the temporary protection of animal rights as Beijing temporarily banned canines from local restaurant menus to prevent Westerners from being offended by the service of Fido as the main course.
With the 2016 Summer Olympics scheduled in Rio, one must wonder how many human rights abuses will occur or be covered up by governmental authorities in a public relations effort intended to show Brazil as a developed country. Sadly, we will see more focus on a Potemkin Rio built for the media than the human trafficking and other rights abuses pervasive throughout the country.
Although Brazil banned slavery per its1888 Golden Law, forced labor of tens of thousands of workers occurs daily driving the economic “miracle” talked about by financial analysts. Whether it is a São Paulo domestic servant, a Mato Grosso cattle farm laborer, or a northern Brazilian charcoal burning worker helping to fill global demand for pig iron, men and woman are working as de facto slaves.
In many cases, the laborers do not have employment contracts and are not paid for their services. To the extent that payment is made, these victims are in turn required to use such earnings to partially pay for food and shelter while incurring debt for the balance that will never be repaid. This situation ensures a dependency and corresponding perpetual servitude...not to mention a growing sense of hopelessness and depression among the victims. Such “contracts” as many exist are contracts of adhesion with one-sided exploitative terms, thus employing Brazilian law as a tool to enslave those that it is expected also to protect.
Rampant poverty has made it possible for many women and children, particularly in rural areas, to become international trafficking victims. Traffickers promise a better life and then ship the victims abroad to be abused in other countries.
Race and ethnicity appear to play a role in this tragedy. Forced labor and trafficking victims invariably are dark-skinned descendants of slaves while those who take advantage of them more often than not have light skin. Perhaps there is a cultural disposition for such mistreatment despite laws banning it.
To be sure, the Brazilian government condemns slavery. Whether it is a lack of law enforcement resources or simply misplaced governmental priorities, forced labor and human trafficking remains common. One has to wonder how many Brazilian lives could be improved if the resources being invested in the 2016 bread and circuses were instead committed to stamping out human trafficking and de facto slavery, and providing more access to fundamental human rights and economic opportunity for the Brazilian masses regardless of skin tone.
Slavery: A 21st Century Evil – Charcoal Slaves, Al Jazeera (Nov. 8, 2011)
Latin America fights human trafficking, Costa Rica News (Oct. 23, 2011)
When we think of slavery, we usually think about the term historically. African Americans were enslaved in America, Jews were enslaved by Pharaoh, so and so forth -- essential history lessons that should inform modern thinking, but something out of the past, not today. Unfortunately, this is not the case at all. In fact, even in the US, large retailers such as Home Depot have been accused of indirectly taking advantage of low-prices resulting from slave-labor in their supply chains, despite supplier codes of conduct that (obviously) prohibit such activity. Among other companies in the textile/retail space, Zara has faced similar scrutiny recently
According to one industry source, Zara was accused of running "sweatshops for their outsourced production" and subsequently after the accusation, "closed a factory that produced Zara's clothing for it's poor labor conditions." In this particular case, "Bolivians were brought illegally to Brazil, locked in small apartments and sewed clothes for 12-14 hours a day. They could not leave the apartment without the consent of the supervisor and didn't have hot water for taking showers or food for lunch...Many of the workers were forced into paying their wages to human traffickers who had smuggled them into the country."
We can learn just as much from Zara's response and corrective actions as we can from their transgressions and oversight failure in the first place. This effort goes beyond one-off codes of conduct that suppliers must adhere to. Rather, they rely on adhering to the strictest industry-based standards in the region (e.g., "introduction of a detailed procedure for verifying that any supplier wishing to work with Zara meets the corporate social responsibility criteria applied by ABVTex (initials in Portuguese for the Brazilian Textile Industry Association), the drafting of a Best Practice Guide, in collaboration with the Ethos Institute for the manufacturing sector," etc.).
Zara is also up to some other activities to combat supplier slave-labor employment in Brazil that can serve as a basis for other companies to model their anti-slavery supply programs on. Stay tuned as we investigate these initiatives and other related recommendations in more detail.
Part 2
Supply chain slavery is a topic that's getting more attention than any time in recent memory. CNN and others have covered the topic in detail of late, calling attention to a new website and mobile app "created by the U.S. State Department and a watchdog group" that offers to pinpoint your "slavery footprint." When I went to take the survey last week, I was surprised at the response I got on a site backed by the US government: "Due to overwhelming global traffic on slaveryfootprint.org, we're switching over to servers with 50 times the capacity [as before]. We'll be right back though, so check in soon." Clearly, consumers are more than curious to know their slavery footprint. No doubt, procurement and operations organizations should react to this interest by taking action and rid their supply chains of this type of labor.
In the first installment of this post, we shared some of the programs Zara has undertaken in their Brazilian supply chain to end slavery. We'll continue this analysis today, sharing two strategies Zara has ordered which we feel other organizations should consider as well. The first is the launch of a "dedicated toll-free number" supervised by non-Zara employees, with the "main purpose [being] to create a channel for citizen cooperation through which the company can become aware of and resolve possible irregularities within the shortest possible timeframe." This will also help pinpoint other labor issues within the Zara supply chain.
Additionally, Zara is working closely with an organization, the National Association of Foreign Immigrants in Brazil, to "identify potential sources of instability among immigrant communities and to develop training and skills programs within the textile industry in order to facilitate their integration in the workforce." The importance of monitoring immigration trends in emerging markets can't be overstated. As the illegal trafficking of humans can often result in migrant workers being taken advantage of or even enslaved. Companies doing business in Mexico, China, Vietnam and other global markets should identify local groups to work with in this capacity too.
In the final installment of this post, we'll examine ways that supplier management technologies and data enrichment solutions can help organizations more systematically monitor and mitigate slave labor risk in their supply chains.
Today, 27 million men, women and children are held, sold and trafficked as slaves throughout the world.
From the sex slaves of Eastern Europe to China's prison labour slaves; from Brazil's hellish charcoal slave camps to entire families enslaved in Pakistan's brick kilns, this series exposes the people behind modern slavery and the companies who profit from it.
Weaving the testimony of current and former slaves with investigations into some of the biggest global slave masters, we ask why this age-old evil continues to flourish.
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Slavery: A 21st Century Evil can be seen from Monday, October 10, at the following times GMT: Monday: 2230; Tuesday: 0930; Wednesday: 0330; Thursday: 1630.
Click here for more on the series.
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