Since 1995, labor inspections have found 63,400 people in work situations analogous to slavery
In 2023, Brazil rescued 3,151 workers from conditions similar to slavery. The number is the highest since 2009, when 3,765 people were rescued. Despite this increase, the data shows how the country has regressed in the recent period because the number of labor tax auditors is at the lowest level in 30 years.
With these data, the number of workers caught in situations similar to slavery rose to 63,400 since the mobile inspection groups were created in 1995.
Field work still leads the number of rescues. The activity with the largest number of freed workers was coffee cultivation (300 people), followed by sugarcane planting (258 people). Among the States, Goiás had the highest number of people rescued (735), followed by Minas Gerais (643), São Paulo (387) and Rio Grande do Sul (333).
Behind the statistics, there are stories of abuse in the fields and cities that show how work similar to slavery is still recurrent in Brazil. In makeshift factories, in high-end homes, on plantations, crimes continue to be committed.
“It was 30 years without earning a salary. It even got to the point where she didn't want to let me eat or drink coffee anymore. I could only go to my room late at night, I couldn’t talk to anyone else,” said an elderly rescued worker, interviewed by TV Brasil in March last year. She ended up dying from a cardiorespiratory arrest before receiving any compensation from the courts.
“I woke up in the morning and didn’t go to sleep until almost midnight. Not to mention that they cursed me a lot, they kept saying bad words. They kept insulting my race, calling me black and all that stuff. When it was a fine day, the Federal Police showed up and everything happened,” reports another worker interviewed by TV Brasil, which is still awaiting compensation. These two women were rescued from domestic work.
Problems
One of the challenges for the rescue of workers in situations similar to slavery to continue growing is the lack of tax auditors.
“It was expected until [esse problema] because, in the last four or five years, we have not had direct actions to combat slave labor. So, many requests for help from workers who were in a situation similar to slave labor were blocked. Therefore, we do not see it as a surprise, but rather, we still see it as a lack. Because we have few auditors from the Ministry of Labor carrying out inspections”says Roque Renato Pattussi, project coordinator at the Migrant Pastoral Support Center.
The Ministry of Labor and Employment recognizes the lack of personnel. He, however, claims that the government managed to increase the number of rescues even with the number of labor tax auditors at the lowest level in history.
“It is a priority for the Labor Inspection Secretariat to monitor, in a broad sense, domestic work and, specifically, cases of domestic slave labor. We have less than 2,000 active labor tax auditors. This is the lowest number since the creation of the career, in 1994. Even so, we managed to deliver, in 2023, the largest number of tax actions”highlights.
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