The operation that rescued 207 people who worked in slave-like conditions at the Aurora, Garibaldi and Salton wineries, harvesting and loading and unloading grapes in Bento Gonçalves (Rio Grande do Sul), once again showed the dimension of slave labor in the country .
By: Editorial PSTU Brasil
The workers denounced having been victims of threats and ill-treatment, including the use of electric shocks and gas pepper. They worked for an outsourced company, a service provider hired by the wineries, Fênix Servicios de Apoyo Administrativo. Most of the workers were from Bahia and were lured with false promises of receiving a salary of R$4,000 a month and good working conditions, such as decent food and accommodation. But none of that happened. In addition to physical punishment, their lodgings did not have the slightest hygienic conditions and the food they served was spoiled.
The wineries were quick to say they knew nothing, blaming the outsourcing company for everything. Hard to believe. Even because that is the standard of all the companies discovered with slave labor: take the body to the question and blame the outsourced ones.
Good business for capitalists
In the shadow of slave labor, Brazilian wineries posted record revenues in 2023. La Salton earned 500 million reais; Dawn, 756 million; and Garibaldi reported billing for R$ 265 million. As if that were not enough, the three wineries have at least 18 active loans at the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES), totaling R$ 66.2 million. Public money that finances slave labor.
While the country was outraged, the Rio Grande do Sul wine producers’ entity tried to justify slave labor in the wineries. The commercial association of the city of Serra Gaúcha blames the “lack of manpower”.
A Bolsonaro councilor from Caxias do Sul, a neighboring municipality, Sandro Fantinel (Patriota) blamed the Bahians for slave labor in the warehouses: “They only know how to play the drum,” he said in a speech in the Municipal Chamber. “Don’t hire those people from up there anymore”, he even asked him. In addition to the obvious racism and xenophobia, the discourse of these people shows all the perversity of the region’s elites. Contrary to what they think and say, it is poor Brazil that sustains what they believe to be: the “rich Brazil”, and not the other way around.
Portrait of a decadent system: Capitalism and the recreation of slave labor
In contemporary slavery, the worker is deceived by far-fetched promises of good wages and working conditions. However, he soon finds himself tied to indebtedness mechanisms for his passage, lodging and food, whose amounts charged are stratospheric, much higher than normal. To pay his supposed “debt”, the worker is imprisoned, prevented from leaving, subjected to punishment and humiliation. This mechanism is known as peonage.
Since 1995, when the Brazilian government created the public system to combat slave labor, more than 60,000 workers have been rescued. More than 80% are black, of which 92% are men and 51% reside in the Northeast.
In Brazil, degraded forms of work have existed for a long time and are still there today. But they are no longer a phenomenon restricted to the agricultural frontier or to remote parts of the Amazon. In fact, it is everywhere, especially in the field.
The growth of agribusiness promoted slave labor. According to the Ministry of Labor, in the period between 2003 and 2014, agribusiness was the absolute champion in the use of slave labor, with practically 80% of workers freed from work in crops, sugar cane fields, deforestation, and livestock. Last year, 87% of those rescued were engaged in rural activities. We not only have those “enslaved to wine”, but also to wood, meat, soybeans, cotton, coffee, orange juice, yerba mate, sisal, gold and, of course, from brothels to prostitution.
The production of oranges for Cutrale, for example, was the object of the rescue of enslaved people in 2013 and for Citrosuco, in 2013 and 2020. Cosan (a Brazilian conglomerate that produces bioethanol, sugar and energy) was the scene of a rescue of workers from one of its sugarcane plants in 2007.
But if at the top we have workers in a situation of slavery, at the top of the agricultural production chain we have a handful of transnationals that control the financing, storage, and marketing of the products. Today there are no more than four large companies (ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus) that control soybean exports in South America, eucalyptus and pine for pulp, tobacco, oranges, among other products.
In addition to agricultural activities, slave labor has been increasing in urban activities, such as making branded clothes and civil construction. Rescues of slaves occurred in the Zara clothing manufacturing line in 2011, Animale in 2017, and M. Officer in 2013 and 2014. In São Paulo, many Bolivian and Paraguayan immigrants are victims of slave labor in the clothing sector. the confection.
Numerous works by the contractor MRV were the scene of rescues in 2021, 2014, 2013 and 2011. Even workers from the expansion works of the São Paulo International Airport, carried out by the construction company OAS, were rescued in 2013.
At the same time that agribusiness uses enormous and sophisticated technical development, industry 4.0, genetics, agricultural inputs, it combines it with this degrading form of work that makes the sector sustain its enormous profit rates. In general, the agro-extractive sector employs few people and pays low wages.
Contemporary slave labor gains momentum in the deep decline of the Brazilian economic structure, in which the role of industry has been increasingly reduced, and in the increase in social inequality. Today we have 90 million workers without work or underemployed, according to the Statistical Yearbook of the Latin American Institute of Socioeconomic Studies (Ilaese/2021). Meanwhile, the 20 largest billionaires in the country hold more wealth than 60% of the population.
Slave labor: a big global business
Slave labor is an expression of a decadent capitalism, which has been systematically devaluing the workforce and recreating slave labor for profit. The rise of outsourcing [tercerización] and the increasing precariousness of work are expressions of this process, and open the doors to modern slavery.
Throughout the world, slavery has proven to be a lucrative and flourishing enterprise. In 2005, slavery had a turnover of US$ 32,000 million. By 2013, the profits from slavery had risen to $150 billion.
What feeds slavery is the growing misery and the immense social inequality promoted by capitalism. According to an Oxfam survey, the world’s 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than 4.6 billion people, or around 60% of the world’s population. Meanwhile, Latin America alone today has 500 million people below the poverty line, a potential reserve army that can be recruited for slave labor. The drama of refugee migrations can also swell this army.
Slave labor present in the history of Brazil
The black slavery that existed in Brazil for 400 years, in addition to slavery in the southern United States and the Caribbean, was essential for capitalism to be born and spread throughout the world. Slavery financed industrialization, European civilization, and expanded the world market. At that time, the law allowed one person to be the property of another, a merchandise that could be exchanged for money.
The end of slavery in Brazil, however, did not prevent the emergence of other degraded forms of work that still exist today. Peonage, for example, was used in the Amazon rubber boom from the late 19th century and persisted until the 1980s. During the military dictatorship, big business bought up large ranches in the Amazon and employed slave labor. One of them was a Volkswagen farm with 140,000 hectares in southern Pará. The complaints also involved farms belonging to Bradesco, White Martins, Banco Mercantil, as well as some businessmen such as Silvio Santos. The workers, generally dispossessed peasants, were recruited from the Northeastern States.
The history of Brazilian capitalism shows that the system does not dispense with slave labor to profit. On the contrary, this form of work has expanded, mainly with the economic decline of the country.
Exit: A Workers’ Agenda to End Contemporary Slavery
Since 2010, the government has created a “dirty list” that prohibits granting rural credit to anyone on it. Public and private banks need to review the list. The list has always been attacked by agribusiness and real estate associations. As important as it is, the list is an insufficient measure to eradicate modern slave labor, which continues to expand. On the other hand, the fines applied to date to businessmen who promote slave labor total R$ 127 million, a fraction of the profits they obtained.
It is necessary to expropriate, without compensation, all the companies that promote slave labor and allocate them to agrarian reform or for housing use. After the rescue of 207 workers in Bento Gonçalves, this debate took over social networks. In 2014, the National Congress adopted a Constitutional Reform to article 243 that includes the use of slave labor as grounds for expropriation of land. However, the Amendment has not yet been regulated, and it is always vetoed by deputies from the ruralist bench [grandes propietarios de campos o terratenientes y latifundistas].
Lula’s government will not promote the regulation of the measure. First, because currently the ruralist base forms the base of the government in Congress. Second, because all the PT governments have always promoted agribusiness with strong tax exemptions and BNDES loans. The result was an increase in slave labor and the strengthening of the ruralistas.
It is necessary to confront agriculture, punish and expropriate companies that use slave labor. But this can only be achieved with a lot of struggle, independent of governments and bosses, involving unions and social movements.
But it is also necessary to change the structure of the country, to put an end to inequality and to this system that promotes the return of slavery. It is necessary to carry out a radical agrarian reform, expropriate the lands of the agribusiness, confront the millionaires, and guarantee employment, income and decent wages.
Article published in www.pstu.org.br, 3/15/2023.-
Translation: Natalia Estrada.