Authorities Free People “Purchased” to Plant Onions in Santa Catarina

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – An inspection operation rescued nine people from slavery in an onion plantation in Ituporanga, interior of Santa Catarina. Five of them were part of a group of 46 rural workers who believed in the promises of three months of good service and paid expenses advertised by a sound car on the streets of Timbiras, Maranhão.

Each one paid R$ 50 to the labor intermediator to secure the opportunity, hopped on a bus and six days and 3,345 kilometers later, reached the city in the Itajaí Valley – where farmers were waiting for them at the bus station.

“Unknowingly, they paid to get on the bus and be exploited,” says labor inspector Cláudio Secchin. The mobile inspection group also relied on the involvement of the Labor Prosecutor’s Office, the Public Defender’s Office and the Federal Police.

“I want the ten that I bought.” Workers indignantly repeated to the inspectors the words said by one of the employers before taking his “package,” away, that is, his fellow travelers.

One of the rescued maintained frequent contact with his mother through WhatsApp messages. Concerned about her son’s situation, she sought help through the Integrated Action Network to Fight Slavery (RAICE) in Maranhão. This led the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) to lodge a complaint with the Ministry of Economy’s Slave Labor Eradication Division and a mobile group was deployed to inspect the property – resulting in the rescue of the nine workers.

None of these were part of the group of ten taken by the farmer. The latter have not been found.

The news spread throughout the city, which hampered detection of other cases. “Workers told us that as soon as the ‘men’ heard about the inspection of one of the farms, they ordered everyone off the field,” says tax auditor Henrique Mandagará.

“Hearing from a worker that the farmers were coming to get ‘what they had bought’ sends us back to the picture that society has of ancient slavery,” says auditor Vanusa Vidal Zenha. The rescued Maranhão men were black.

Travel expenses were discounted from the workers’ wages, which is forbidden by law. According to Cláudio Secchin, workers began by owing the advance payment for the part of the food that was not provided and for personal protection equipment.

In the complaint, the farmer refused to tell how much the workers had harvested, according to the CPT. His commitment had been to pay R$6 for each thousand onion seedlings planted.

They were housed under appalling hygiene conditions, some sleeping on the floor, in a derelict house, leaking, and in the 2ºC winter cold, with nothing to protect themselves, according to the inspection coordinator. “No worker was registered, and as a consequence, they had no labor, social security or social rights,” he said.

Unlike the large farms that are often the scene of slave labor operations, the property covered six hectares – like many others in the region that also depend on this labor force.

That same week, 18 workers brought from Ceará were also rescued from an onion plantation in Ituporanga. And they were also lured under the deceitful pledge of good wages and proper housing and food conditions.

The group was found by the State Police. As the rescue was not handled by the public system to fight slavery, up to now there is no information about the payment of workers’ rights.

More than a one-off problem of an employer, this points to a production system that ties competitiveness to labor exploitation.

The operation forced the payment of salaries and severance pay, which totaled some R$90,000. The employer covered the costs of returning the five men from Timbiras back to Maranhão. They will receive three installments of unemployment insurance to which they are entitled.

Over 55,000 released since 1995

Brazil has passed the 55,000 mark of workers rescued from modern-day slavery. The figures, included in the Information and Statistics Panel of Labor Inspection in Brazil, refer to the period between May 1995, when the country established its system to fight this crime, and the end of the first half of 2020.

In total, R$108 million haa been paid by employers as late wages and severance pay, excluding compensation.

According to article 149 of the Criminal Code, four factors can define contemporary slavery in Brazil: forced labor (which involves the restriction of the right to come and go), debt bondage (a captivity linked to debts, often fraudulent), degrading conditions (work that denies human dignity, placing health and life at risk) or an exhausting workday (leading the worker to complete exhaustion given the intensity of exploitation, also endangering health and life).

Workers have been rescued from cattle, soy, cotton, coffee, fruits, yerba mate, onions and potato farms, in the felling of native forest, in the production of coal for the steel industry, in civil construction, in sewing workshops, in brothels, among other activities.

Source: UOL