In the last 10 years, more than 13,600 workers in conditions similar to slavery were rescued in Brazil. Last year, there were 1,930, the highest number since 2013 and a 106% increase from 2020, when records show 936 people.
The data are from the Undersecretariat of Labor Inspection (SIT) of the Ministry of Labor and Welfare. In this 2022, the country is close to completing 500 rescued.
The uptrend also appears in the courts. According to data from the Labor Court, from 2017 to June this year, all labor instances judged 10,482 cases involving the recognition of the employment relationship of workers in conditions similar to slavery. Between 2020 and 2021, there was a 41% increase.
The president of the Superior Labor Court, Minister Emmanoel Pereira, highlights that slave labor was abolished by the Lei Áurea in 1988.
“Work analogous to slavery is a wound that insists on being present in our society. It is a situation that affronts the Federal Constitution and the dignity of the worker, which is a non-negotiable value of the human condition”, he says.
The vice-coordinator of the Coordination for Combating Slave Labor and Combating Trafficking in Persons of the Public Ministry of Labor of Rio de Janeiro (Conaete/MPT-RJ), Juliane Mombelli, believes that the high view in rescues and actions in 2021 is motivated by the damming caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and by the worsening of social conditions in the country, which left more people more susceptible to situations of exploitation.
“In the first months of the pandemic, there was no way to carry out inspections and complaints did not appear because there was no movement of people. With the return of movement, the end of the distance, operations resumed, but the economic situation ended up generating a rise in the country as a whole.
The pandemic has greatly affected employability and social vulnerability has increased a lot”, he points out.
The Labor Prosecutor also indicates that the visibility given by the media to cases of slave labor made the complaints grow, another point that contributed to the numbers.
Also according to the SIT of the Ministry of Labor and Welfare, in 2020, the MPT received 835 complaints of slave labor, a number that rose to 1,415 last year, an increase of almost 70%. In the last five years, that number has reached 5,538.
In May of this year, the longest exploitation of a person in a situation of contemporary slavery came to light since Brazil created an inspection system in 1995.
In the state of Rio de Janeiro, an 86-year-old woman was found, who worked for a family for 72 of them, without weekly rest, vacation, salary, opportunity to study or leave the place.
The MPT operation began in September 2021, with the rescue in March 2022.
Work in conditions analogous to slavery is characterized by exhausting hours, degrading conditions, retention of documents, inability to leave the workplace and debt slavery.
Complaints can be made through the Federal Government’s Dial 100 or through the website of the Public Ministry of Labor.
In Rio de Janeiro, for nine years, an action by Conaete has helped the rescued, with accommodation, hygiene material, psychosocial care, legal assistance and even professional training.
The “Integrated Action Project: Resgatando a Cidadania” is maintained with appeals from labor convictions for collective pain and suffering and fines for non-compliance with labor legislation.
During the pandemic, the initiative also gained a new front for distributing food to vulnerable groups, such as day laborers who were out of work.
“We want to offer an alternative to break the cycle of vulnerability and exploitation”, points out prosecutor Juliane Mombelli.
Since 1995, when Brazil recognized the persistence of slave labor in its territory before the United Nations, the country has had more than 57,000 rescued.
The MPT’s Observatory for the Eradication of Slave Labor and Human Trafficking points out that more than 65% of the victims are rural workers.
Slaughterhouse professionals, bricklayers, coal workers also appear on the list, each category representing between 2% and 3% of cases. Regarding the victims’ schooling, about 40% have up to the 5th year of elementary school and 29% are illiterate.
Source: CNN Brasil
