The country has a record of workers rescued from a situation similar to slavery

At least 500 people were rescued in Brazil this year in conditions similar to slavery, from January to this Friday (13), according to data released by the Inspection Division for the Eradication of Slave Labor of the Ministry of Labor and Welfare. In the same period, 314 were caught last year.

The number in 2022, an accumulated record for the year, was reinforced with operations in Rondônia and Minas Gerais on May 13, the 134th anniversary of the official abolition of slavery in the country. And the trend is that the “explosion” does not stop there.

According to analysts interviewed by the report, the stories are multiplying and tend to grow more in the wake of agricultural activities, the deterioration of the economy — with an increase in unemployment and inflation — as well as a consequence of hunger, which is spreading across several regions of the world. parents.

In the country, the cases already exceed the sum of the same periods of 2020 and 2021, when considering operations in progress. The slavery map also includes states that did not appear between January and May of last year, mostly in the Northeast region.

It is from the Southeast, however, that another alert comes.

In the state of Minas Gerais —which accounts for 73% of cases in 2022 and leads the national ranking— the number of people rescued under these conditions increased by 132.09%, from 158 to 368 victims between January and May 13, 2021 and the same range in 2022.

“These data bring to light two structural problems in which the solutions are complex. The first is the increase in the socioeconomic vulnerability of the population in general, since the ghost of hunger has returned to haunt millions of homes across Brazil”, says the tax auditor. and Coordinator of the Project for the Prevention and Combat of Slave Labor of the Regional Labor Superintendence, in Minas Gerais, Humberto Camasmie, emphasizing that “when the worker is in this situation, he submits himself to any form of exploitation to guarantee the support of the family “.

The situation is worrying across the country, he says. “And it happens concomitantly with the resumption of sugarcane planting, an activity that demands large volumes of labor seasonally and historically precarious the working conditions of employees invested in planting and harvesting.”

At least 100 workers rescued in sugarcane fields in recent weeks, according to Camasmie, should be added to the state’s statistics and another operation is underway involving coal production. In the states of Bahia and Rondônia, operations were also confirmed at this time.

Until the night of this Friday, two victims were counted in Rondônia.

The workers, who had been unpaid for 115 days and were working in the extraction of eucalyptus leaves for oil production, were found by tax auditors from the Regional Labor Superintendence, by representatives of the Public Ministry of Labor and the Federal Highway Police.

In a note, the Labor Tax Audit describes the accommodation they used as “precariously made of wood, with dirt and cracks that allowed the entry of wild animals and rodents”.

The auditors also state that “due to the proximity to the eucalyptus oil extraction oven, the space was subjected to constant smoke, which covered the foam provided for resting with soot”. The name of the company involved was not revealed.

For the head of the Inspection Division for the Eradication of Slave Labor of the Ministry of Labor and Welfare, Maurício Krepsky, the number of cases registered in 2022 is worrying.

“The numbers so far are worrying and reinforce the need for a differentiated approach to the problem, as foreseen in the strategic objectives of the Sustainable Work Program, launched last week by the Labor Inspectorate”, he said, alluding to objectives such as the eradication of work children and work in conditions similar to slavery; in addition to measures such as the dissemination of the concepts of Responsible Business Conduct, “ESG” practices (Environment, Social and Governance) and Sustainable Work, provided for in the program.

Krepsky adds that, due to seasonal economic activities, the number of cases and workers rescued in the second half of the year has been much higher than in the first months of the year.

“This obliges us to be attentive and act on several fronts, such as in dialogue with workers and employers and in the dissemination of good practices of responsible business conduct”, he says, reinforcing that “the whole society can and must act with these objectives to eradicate the modern forms of slavery”.

Camasmie, from Minas Gerais, also reinforces that the trend until the end of the year is for maintenance or worsening of the situation.

“Unfortunately, the trend is for maintenance or even worsening, as there are no prospects of implementing public policies to create decent employment opportunities, and not even to correct the socioeconomic distortions existing between the regions that supply and use labor in activities that historically make working conditions precarious, since the times of sugarcane plantation owners and coffee barons in coffee plantations, as well as potato and onion crops and charcoal production, among others”, says the auditor.

He also adds that the numbers could be more expressive, if it weren’t for “the lack of structure and especially the lack of tax auditors to inspect the complaints that reach the protection agencies”.

In the case of Minas Gerais, “due to the prioritization of operations in sugarcane”, he says, it is not possible to carry out actions to combat urban slave labor.

“But we have already received some complaints with evidence of slave labor in civil construction this year, but unfortunately we did not arrive in time”.

Cases involving domestic employment are also widespread in the country, shaped by forced labor, exhausting hours, degrading working conditions or debt bondage, for example.