SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has named Brazil as one of the worst countries in the world for respecting workers’ rights. In its annual Global Rights index, released earlier this month, the ITUC maps international worker rights’ violations and names the worst offending countries.
“Brazil’s descent into violence continues in 2020 as the police cracked down heavily on strikes, firing tear gas, beating up strike organizers to frighten protesting workers, and arresting and detaining many people,” says the document.
The latest edition of the index ranks 144 countries on their level of respect for workers’ rights. Brazil is listed as one of the ten worst countries for workers in 2020 along with Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, Honduras, India, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, Turkey and Zimbabwe.
“The trends by governments and employers to restrict the rights of workers through violations of collective bargaining and the right to strike, and excluding workers from unions, have been made worse in 2020 by an increase in the number of countries which impede the registration of unions – denying workers both representation and rights,” says Sharan Burrow General Secretary, International Trade Union Confederation in the foreword of the document.
The index covers a wide range of abuses, including workers’ collective bargaining violations, denying workers the right to strike, not allowing workers to join unions, government surveillance on unions and their members, as well as violence and killings.
According to the ITUC, in 2019 Brazilian labor union leaders faced arbitrary arrests and received multiple death threats; some were even murdered. The entity says that in June of 2019, labor union leader Carlos Cabral Pereira was shot and killed by two unidentified men on a motorcycle, close to his home in Rio Maria, in the Northern state of Para.
Pereira was known in the region as a “social leader who promoted the rights to access to land by peasant workers. For years, he had publicly denounced threats against him”, says the report.
With the current Covid-19 pandemic the rights of workers have decreased even further, say Brazilian union leaders.
“This government has no sympathy in relation to the financial crisis that affects society. In addition to having a low investment in social programs in this pandemic moment, it also prevents a series of categories of workers from receiving emergency aid,” says Carmen Foro, Central Workers’ Union (CUT) Secretary General. CUT is said to be not only Brazil’s main national workers’ union, but Latin America’s biggest labor union and the fifth largest in the world.
A few days after the World Health Organization (W.H.O,) declared the coronavirus a worldwide pandemic, President Jair Bolsonaro issued a Provisional Measure having the force of law, which called for, among other things, the reduction in workers’ wages, moving up of national, state and municipal holidays, early individual or group vacations, as well as the suspension of employment contracts, without the payment of wages, for up to four months.
The latter measure faced such widespread criticism from labor unions and civil society that Bolsonaro was forced to retreat.
The provisional measure allowed the President to implement the new rules immediately, without the prior approval of Congress. Under the constitution, however, lawmakers have to sanction these norms to make them permanent. On June 17, Brazil’s Lower House approved the Provisional Measure and extended its validity until December of 2020.
According to CUT officials, the Brazilian government once again fails to comply with the International Labor Organization, which insists on the obligation to consult workers in cases of changes such as those promoted by these new labor measures.
But since the pandemic started, very few demonstrations against new labor measures have been seen in Brazil’s major cities. Labor activist Foro explains that, although her entity supports any protests promoted by workers against these measures, CUT and other labor unions have refrained from calling workers onto the street because of the coronavirus crisis.
“We support popular initiatives of democratic and peaceful organization, but at this moment we are very focused on helping the population that is unemployed, starving,” she told the BBC earlier this month.
Despite the uncertainties of the times, the majority of labor union officials say that work conditions in Brazil are likely to deteriorate even further, as unemployment surges and the Bolsonaro government cracks down on workers’ rights and benefits.
“Instead of the Brazilian government exercising its regulatory role, protecting workers, safeguarding incomes and ensuring the functioning of the economy, Bolsonaro has taken a criminal and negligent stance in combating the spread of COVID-19,” concludes Antonio de Lisboa Amâncio Vale International Relations Secretary at CUT Brazil.