{"id":34565,"date":"2022-01-28T18:24:16","date_gmt":"2022-01-28T18:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/?post_type=noticia&p=34565"},"modified":"2022-02-02T14:56:40","modified_gmt":"2022-02-02T14:56:40","slug":"modern-slavery-how-the-pandemic-and-the-state-of-poverty-contribute-to-this-situation","status":"publish","type":"noticia","link":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/noticias\/modern-slavery-how-the-pandemic-and-the-state-of-poverty-contribute-to-this-situation\/","title":"Modern slavery: how the pandemic and the state of poverty contribute to this situation","content":"

On January 28, 2004, four employees of the Ministry of Labor, including three labor inspectors, were executed with a shot to the head. The employees were investigating complaints of slave labor on farms in the region of Una\u00ed, in the state of Minas Gerais. Since 2009, the date of the Una\u00ed Killings has been observed as National Day to Combat Slave Labor, in honor of the inspectors N\u00e9lson Jos\u00e9 da Silva, Jo\u00e3o Batista Soares Lage, Erat\u00f3stenes de Almeida Gon\u00e7alves and the driver A\u00edlton Pereira de Oliveira. The architect of the crime, former mayor Ant\u00e9rio M\u00e2nica, was convicted to 100 years in prison, but had his sentence annulled by the TRF1 appeals court in 2018 and is awaiting a new trial.<\/span><\/p>\n

Currently, lack of accountability for crimes is just one of the problems of contemporary slavery, as the pandemic has made the situation even worse, according to the French friar, Xavier Plassat. As coordinator of the national campaign against slave labor of the Catholic Church\u2019s Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), he argues that the undermining of labor laws and the state of poverty in the country \u2013 which pushed more than <\/span>19 million Brazilians into hunger<\/span><\/a> last year \u2013 has caused the most vulnerable people to be forced to take jobs that dehumanize them. <\/span><\/p>\n

Living in Brazil since 1989, Friar Xavier has been fighting for over thirty years to put an end to modern slavery, without losing his indignation. \u201cBy the grace of God, I have kept my ability to rebel intact,\u201d he said, remembering when he was a young man during the French demonstrations of May 1968. \u201cI often say that I learned what I know from the grassroots university of the streets of Paris. I was 18 years old at the time. I took part, body and soul, in the student revolution. And this was instrumental in my development. Some people grow accustomed to situations, but today I live in a region where this is difficult. Every day we discover scandalous things.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In an interview with Conectas, speaking about the municipality of Aragua\u00edna, in the state of Tocantins, the Dominican friar commented on the relationship between slave labor and environmental crimes, and the increase in the number of inspections and rescues made in 2021. <\/span><\/p>\n

Conectas \u2013 How has the pandemic impacted the combat of slave labor in Brazil? <\/b><\/h2>\n

Frei Xavier Plassat \u2013<\/b> The pandemic has added another aggravating factor to an already very alarming situation, marked by a high and growing unemployment rate and despair by people who need a job, in addition to the adverse effects of the labor reform, which has enabled a normalization\/legalization of abusive forms of labor exploitation. <\/span><\/p>\n

Obviously, the \u201canything goes\u201d approach of the Bolsonaro government\u2019s mismanagement opened the floodgates even wider, especially due to the discrediting of all state oversight (primarily in the labor and environmental areas). To these factors, the pandemic added an even greater burden for particularly vulnerable groups, causing situations of extreme poverty and hunger that until then had largely been overcome. Hungry people are pressed for time. More than ever, for many Brazilians, any job is better than no job at all. <\/span><\/p>\n

Conectas \u2013 When people face hardship, they end up accepting any type of work\u2026<\/b><\/h2>\n

Frei Xavier Plassat \u2013<\/b> Yes. A sign of this trend is the reduction in the number of complaints registered until recently: at the CPT, our Campaign used to receive an average of 50 to 100 complaints of slave labor per year until 2013. This number then dropped to between 10 and 20. Other complaint channels also saw declines. But recent data show that complaints increased again in 2020, and even more so in 2021. In the Slave Labor Eradication Division (Detrae), the number doubled. <\/span><\/p>\n

It is also necessary to highlight, among the most apparent difficulties, the deliberate freezing and then withdrawal of public funding for labor inspections, resulting in fewer operational resources and an enormous shortage of Labor Inspection staff: over the past ten years, there has been a reduction of nearly 45% in the number of Inspectors and of almost 70% in the funding for the area. The last public service recruitment exam took place in 2013. The existing demand today is for more than 1,500 additional positions, or nearly 40% of the existing staff. <\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, the Ministry of Labor and Social Security \u2013 reestablished in July last year \u2013 is now the ministry most affected by the president\u2019s vetoes to the 2022 Budget: if things stand, the ministry will get BRL 1.005 billion of the total BRL 3.184 billion of cuts made to the text approved by Congress. <\/span><\/p>\n

Conectas \u2013 Nevertheless, wasn\u2019t there an increase in the number of inspections and rescues in 2021?<\/b><\/h2>\n

Frei Xavier Plassat \u2013<\/b> The data available for 2021 demonstrate an impressive inspection record, but they indicate that there is a shameless tendency among certain employers to take advantage of the increased insecurity of the working class. According to the Labor Inspection Department, 2021 ended with a record number of inspections (more than 440 establishments were inspected, compared to an annual average of 262 in the previous 7 years) and rescues (more than 1,900, compared to the previous average of 1,004). <\/span><\/p>\n

The operations conducted by the national Mobile Inspection Group represent just 34% of this total (nearly 150 inspections), illustrating the significant role played by the regional inspection departments (67% of the total, or nearly 290 inspections). For example, in the states of Minas Gerais (74 inspections), Goi\u00e1s (39), Tocantins (22), Rio de Janeiro (22) and S\u00e3o Paulo (21). <\/span><\/p>\n

Conectas \u2013 What explains this increase in the number of inspections and rescues, considering the current precarious situation? <\/b><\/h2>\n

Frei Xavier Plassat \u2013<\/b> It\u2019s hard to say. I have the impression that the inspectors are working miracles \u2014 and I don\u2019t say that because I\u2019m a Dominican. We are lucky to have very tough groups of inspectors, especially in Minas Gerais. Perhaps also, for a time, workers didn\u2019t want to file a complaint because they hoped things would improve. But it appears that, in 2021, they got tired of waiting, driving them to make the complaints. But this is purely hypothetical, I really don\u2019t have the key to interpret this very clearly. <\/span><\/p>\n

Conectas \u2013 Between 2003 and 2014, an average of 3,704 workers in slave labor conditions were freed per year in Brazil, according to the CPT; in subsequent years, between 2015 and 2020, the average fell to 941. Does this reduction reflect an improvement in the situation or the invisibility of the cases? <\/b><\/h2>\n

Frei Xavier Plassat \u2013<\/b> Various indicators point to a greater risk of invisibility. To understand the sharp drop in the numbers \u2013 always remembering that the numbers do not reflect reality \u2013 it is necessary to consider several factors that have significantly changed the situation of labor exploitation, both rural and urban, as well as the engagement of society and the State in the combating of slave labor. <\/span><\/p>\n

In the early years, the combat of slave labor was essentially focused in the Amazon, and in the North and Center-West regions, where the first major complaints were made (by Pedro Casald\u00e1liga, who helped found the CPT). From 2003 to 2012, 71% of the identified cases and half of the rescues were made in the Amazon. Slave labor outside the countryside was practically absent from the numbers for this period, representing just 4% of the rescues. The dominant activities in which slave labor was found were: deforestation and work on livestock pastures (35%), sugarcane plantations (25%), croplands (19%) and charcoal kilns (9%). With an annual average of 2,500 people rescued between 2007 and 2009, sugarcane in these years represented half the annual total. Its almost complete disappearance in later years is the main reason behind the reduction in the total number of rescues nationwide. The ban on burning land and the subsequent mechanization of production contributed summarily to the reduction. Meanwhile, environmental pressure also likely slowed down the pace of deforestation. <\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, the improvement of technology, which reduces the manual component of labor, probably contributed to a reduction in the average number of workers found in the inspected establishments.<\/span><\/p>\n

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