‘I want others not to go through what I went through’, says Brazilian who is part of the Biden administration

Five months ago, the Biden administration appointed a Brazilian woman to an important role: helping workers, especially immigrants, escape traps, such as being stuck in grueling and underpaid hours because they don’t know how to ask for help.

Natalícia Tracy, 50, is a senior adviser to the Department of Labor’s Occupational Health and Safety Agency (Osha). In her role, she has sought to unite efforts among the various sectors of the US government to increase enforcement over labor exploitation.

“For example: the USDA (Department of Agriculture) will investigate the quality of a food. But they arrive at the production site and there are a lot of people working in precarious conditions. They can notify Osha, so that we can investigate”, she explained in an interview with sheet.

There are also partnerships with immigration authorities, such as creating more precise protocols on how to deal with situations linked to exploitation. She points out that about 40% of cases involving human trafficking to the US are still work-related.

Another of its missions is to create ways to encourage people who are being exploited to report.

“Many workers, mainly undocumented [de imigração], are very afraid to seek information and tell what is happening to them. Access to language is a barrier. And even those who have access to the community are often afraid to speak up. You don’t know who to trust. Often the person knows that what he is experiencing is not right, but he does not understand the seriousness of the situation. So part of my job is expanding information networks,” he said.

“We are creating new initiatives to let workers know that the Department of Labor is here to support them, regardless of their immigration status. We don’t care where they came from, how they came, how long they’ve been here. Everyone has the same right,” he says. .

“If the law starts excluding people, it doesn’t work, right? We are working to make it clear that every worker has value. Humanizing all workers is the first step towards creating a fair society”, he defends.

Natalícia has lived through several of the difficulties she seeks to combat. She came to the US in 1989, at age 19, to work as a nanny and maid for a Brazilian family in Boston. She ended up being subjected to long hours, with very low pay and restrictions on using the phone and communicating with the outside world.

“Under US labor laws, I was in slave labor,” she told BBC News Brasil in 2016. She slept on an enclosed porch, where the floor was cement. She often had no food left over after cooking for her employers.

“I had a very difficult start here. Not only because of the adaptation process, but because of the working conditions that were offered to me. When we have already been through a situation, we know what it is. A lot of my energy to work and help others people come from this: I don’t wish on anyone any of the things I had to overcome”, he says.

The family that hired her ended up returning to Brazil, but she stayed in the US, where she married an American and decided to study. She finished high school and then built a robust academic career. In 2016, she earned a doctorate in sociology from Boston University, with a thesis on the relationships between race, immigration and work.

As a professor at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, she has taught classes on topics such as work and globalization and human trafficking. She has studied in partnership with other universities, such as Harvard, and has written several publications on the field.

While studying, Natalícia was establishing herself as a leader for labor rights in Boston, which concentrates a large number of Brazilians, some of them without documents. She held positions as executive director of the Brazilian Worker Center and helped found the Massachusetts Coalition for Domestic Workers.

In 2014, she helped articulate the passage of a state law to expand domestic workers’ rights, such as requiring them to have written contracts and days off, even if they are undocumented. Her performance also contributed to the passage of new labor laws in the state of Connecticut.

With this work, he ended up approaching politics. She even met with then-President Barack Obama and Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, both Democrats.

She believes that the White House’s invitation to the current position came at the right time. “This position gives me the opportunity to amplify the voices of people like me. In the Department, there’s ‘I’ of people like ‘I’. I feel a huge responsibility, for being able to do things that are national in scope, but I also think it’s important that people see me in this position, because it shows that no matter how hard you have, it’s not impossible to move forward”.

Natalícia usually comes to Brazil at least once a year to visit her mother, with whom she speaks with great affection. “My father passed away five years ago, and my mother, for me, is a source of energy and inspiration. All the things I’ve overcome have been because of the foundation, the values, the words, that she gave me”, he comments.

Living in Washington for two months, she says she needed to get away from university life for the time being, but plans to continue researching the relationship between politics and work. “Maybe later on, managing my time better, I can try to teach at a university here?”