An entity linked to the International Church of the Grace of God, of the missionary RR Soares, is the target of a public civil action proposed this month by the MPT (Ministry of Labor).
Over the FIC (Fundação Internacional de Comunicação), the media arm of the neo-Pentecostal church, accusations of psychological violence, discrimination based on age, gender, race and sexual orientation, imposition of beauty standards on employees and several other labor violations are hovering over the FIC (Fundação Internacional de Comunicação).
There was also unofficial guidance not to hire blacks, women over 50 and homosexuals to appear in the video, according to prosecutors.
Eight people, including former and current employees, were interviewed to mount the inquiry that blames the management of Edjail Kalled Adib Antonio, director of the FIC, for the “climate of terror” created by “scouts of fear” in the work environment, according to the lawsuit. . THE Sheet will preserve their anonymity.
Accompanied by a lawyer, Kalled participated in a videoconference with the Labor Attorney in July. He then said that there are “some problems with former employees who left because the company has been going through some readjustments, even for an update, an improvement in the work environment”, as stated in the minutes of the hearing.
The report tried to talk to Kalled or a lawyer at the foundation. From Tuesday (9) to Friday (12), he called the FIC legal team every day and left a message. There was no return. The newspaper also sent multiple messages to the cell phone of Kalled and lawyers linked to Igreja da Graça. There was no response.
According to the MPT, harassment also took place under the previous board, but it is Kalled who concentrates most of the abusive conduct. His administration conducts the work routine on the basis of “shouting”, “humiliation” and “coercion”, without any internal channel to denounce these abuses, says the lawsuit, which is being processed in the 30th Labor Court of São Paulo.
There would also be an “internal hunt to try to identify and persecute those who denounce”. At least one of these employees would have been fired.
Some examples attributed to Kalled: 1) regulating the temperature of the studio to force a presenter who didn’t like to sweat, accusing her of being “anxious” or “nervous”; 2) make comments about “menopause” and “heat”, “old skin”, say that “girls are too old to be on video” or that they are “tired of an old woman presenting a main evening news”; 3) not to hire an intern because he is black; 4) affirm that a professional “masturbated too much, because his hands were extremely yellow”, when he complained about the low temperature in the room.
The air conditioning, by the way, would have motivated fights that led Kalled to install padlocks on the windows of the building in the middle of the pandemic, said deponents. It would be a way to keep the property always cold, without air circulation, to conserve technical equipment that shared space with journalists and needed cooler temperatures.
Says one report: “Kalled was widely speaking that anyone who tried to turn off the air conditioning would be fired for just cause,” and that “people were upset, many wore a scarf on their heads, wore lots and lots of blouses.” Another: “I have the feeling of being in prison when I see the locks, […] in the event of a fire in here, how are we going to get out?”.
The veiled rule would circulate in the corridors of the foundation for “men, if they are gay, to be discreet.” A journalism coordinator would have told an employee that he was “loose thong, referring to a more effeminate person, a more delicate person in the treatment”, according to this same professional heard by the MPT.
The women narrate an aesthetic demand that slips into moral harassment. Kalled, they say, made public comments that incited internal competition. Things like “you have to tell this girl to dye her hair”, or “that other girl’s skin is too old to be in the video”.
A colleague says a journalist started taking psychiatric medication after Kalled told her she should drop out of the show because she was bad at it, and also that she had gone through menopause because he thought she was too old for the job.
The proportion of medicated staff would have increased under the new manager. Claiming to feel overworked and accumulating tasks not provided for in their contracts, workers reported “physical and psychological exhaustion, generalized anxiety disorder, and burnout and panic syndrome,” according to the lawsuit. One of the employees said she was taking rivotril, escitalopram oxalate and zolpidem in order to sleep, “because her life became hell.”
According to employees, a climate of constant vigil prevails at the FIC. They “feel like they’re Big Brother” and are constantly reminded that there are “cameras everywhere, if you do something wrong it’s a warning”, says the MPT. One was in a female environment, “without the employees knowing.”
The action, by the Labor Prosecutor Elisa Maria Brant de Carvalho Malta, asks for R$ 500 thousand in compensation and says that, despite “the irregularities identified by the MPT, […] the defendant did nothing to remedy the illicit acts”.
The judge handling the case must decide, as a next step, whether to grant an injunction to compel the FIC to comply with various legal requirements. One is to refrain from committing acts that imply discrimination and ridicule “through, for example, offensive anecdotes or stereotypes, especially in relation to aesthetic appearance, physical attributes and/or age (age)”.
Another: that the company no longer tolerates moral harassment, discrimination and any type of persecution, giving its contractors “respectful treatment and within the limits of cordiality
that must be present in labor relations”.
A practical example of conduct to be followed: stop demanding specific accessories, clothes, makeup or hairstyle from employees without granting them the items charged.
In the July hearing with the MPT, the defense says that old professionals were not “adjusting very much to the new routines that were imposed even for an improvement to the workplace and so that the company could also better serve the end of it”. The lawyer proposes that the Public Prosecutor’s Office go to the site “to verify what the company’s reality is like”, because the content of the action “has become a very partial thing”.
Kalled denies some points, such as the alleged presence of a camera in the bathroom. Malta, the prosecutor in the case, questioned the defendant about the signing of a TAC (Term of Adjustment of Conduct), which is a commitment for the investigated party to adapt to labor laws. The lawyer replied “that the company really disagrees a little with what happened” and that, if it ratifies the TAC, “it is assuming responsibility for something it did not commit”.
The foundation takes care of the RIT (International Television Network), with a presence on the internet and on open and pay TV. On the grid, attractions such as “Redação RIT”, “Jornal das 22” and a bunch of openly proselytizing content.
The “Show da Fé”, presented by the owner of the church, RR Soares, is the flagship of the program. On Wednesday afternoon (10), one of the programs, “Consultation with the Doctor”, discussed the topic of mental health at work.
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