The Brazil Strategy Network (BSN) calls itself "an independent association of academics, non-governmental organization representatives, human rights and immigration activists, members of religious communities, journalists, students, labor unionists, and interested individuals and organizations in support of those working for economic and social justice in Brazil."

Here's the resolution's text:

The recently signed Memorandum of Understanding Between the United States and Brazil to Advance Cooperation on Biofuels is a modest and partial response to the global challenge of shifting toward a clean, sustainable and equitable energy system. 

The MOU confirms the critical roles that both the United States and Brazil play in our global efforts to replace fossil fuels with renewable sources of energy that empower people and protect our environment.

The Brazil Strategy Network applauds the governments of both the U.S. and Brazil for their respective efforts to advance such an important cooperative initiative.

Moreover, we encourage both parties to deepen this avenue of cooperation through extensive consultations with representatives from civil society in order to overcome the legacy of social exclusion and environmental devastation that threatens to undermine bilateral and global efforts to lessen greenhouse gases and move toward equitable and sustainable development.

For centuries, sugarcane cultivation in Brazil and throughout the Americas represented a social process of concentrating control over land and the wealth it created. 

Slaves, peasants and rural workers were subjected to political repression and economic coercion to preserve the sugarcane elite's dominance over the land and people. 

While some gains have been made under democracy, increased production of sugarcane based ethanol in Brazil, the Caribbean basin, and Africa could further impoverish rural workers, degrade arable land, and pollute fresh water supplies if strong policy measures are not taken to expand land reform and integrate family farm production into an equitable and sustainable model of biofuel production. 

Cooperation between the United States and Brazil to advance the production of biofuels should not undermine efforts to empower family farmers and both agricultural and industrial workers. 

Rather, the importance of biofuels as a transformative force throughout the world is partly contingent upon bilateral cooperation that includes increasing the number of land-owning family farmers and improving salaries and working conditions for agricultural and industrial workers in an equitable and sustainable chain of production that includes collectively-owned agro-industries rather than more corporate controlled agribusiness. 

Further consolidation of land ownership and control over agricultural production for food or fuel will risk the legitimacy and efficacy of this binational cooperation, thereby undermining global efforts to replace fossil fuels with clean, renewable sources of energy.

Recognizing the importance of the MOU as a possible step toward biofuel production within an equitable and democratic policy model, the Brazil Strategy Network resolves to encourage both the governments of the U.S. and Brazil to:

1) agree to establish and enforce rigorous environmental and labor standards for biofuel production and consumption that reflect the International Labor Organization's core rights that protect freedom of association and collective bargaining while prohibiting slave and child labor as well as discrimination in employment; in order to promote efficiency, energy conservation, environmental protection, local and small scale production wherever possible, worker safety, and the equitable distribution of productivity gains and profits to the workforce;

2) encourage the production and consumption of biofuels in developing countries by providing the necessary investment and technology for efficient, equitable and sustainable production and use of ethanol and biodiesel;

3) condition such investment and technology transfer on compliance with those environmental and labor standards that insure equitable and sustainable production and consumption through the establishment of a certification process;

4) mandate international financial institutions, including the Inter-American Development Bank, to apply such environmental and labor standards to guide lending and encourage private investors to do likewise;

5) The MOU between the U.S. and Brazil to Advance Cooperation on Biofuels includes the expressed intention to establish a Steering Group to oversee the work and coordination necessary to complete its objectives. 

The Brazil Strategy Network encourages the governments of the U.S. and Brazil, as well as their designated representatives, the U.S. Under Secretary of Economic, Energy, and Agricultural Affairs and Brazil's Under Secretary for Political Affairs, to strengthen the representative base of the Steering Group to include leading civil society representatives from the agrarian reform, consumer rights, environmental preservation, labor union, and scientific and technical communities of both countries.

For more information about this resolution and the Brazil Strategy Network please contact:

Mark S. Langevin, Ph.D.
National Organizer
Brazil Strategy Network
www.brazilstrategy.org

This information is part of the document, "Decent Labor in the Americas: A Hemispheric Agenda for 2006-2015," released Tuesday, May 2.

To combat the practice of forced labor and encourage the creation of quality jobs, the ILO suggests that governments take legal measures to make punishments more severe and to enforce them.

The ILO report also states that special programs are needed for the rural sector, where forced labor is most intense. and that national and regional campaigns are in order to make employers and workers more conscious of the fact that this kind of work needs to be totally eliminated.

According to the ILO, if government officials, employers, and employees get on the bandwagon, it will be possible to reduce the number of workers subjected to forced labor by 20-35% within 10 years.

The agenda announced yesterday by the director-general of the ILO, Juan Somavia, acknowledges that Brazil is a model of this type of policy.

An important change introduced in the country, according to the ILO, was the fact that forced labor, besides being considered a crime, is now also treated as a human rights violation.

End of Child Labor

The countries of the Americas will have 15 years to eliminate child labor. Within a period of ten years, they should extinguish the worst forms of child labor, reduce the number of workers subjected to slave labor by 20-30%, and diminish the indices of gender and race segregation in the labor market by 50%.

These are the goals defined in the Hemispheric Agenda that will be voted this week by the 35 countries that are participating in the 16th Meeting of American Country Members of the International Labor Organization (ILO) in Brasí­lia.

At the end of last year, at the 4th Summit of the Americas, the countries pledged to create decent jobs. The ILO agenda is an attempt to find ways to turn this commitment into reality.

It is estimated that Latin America has 5.7 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 who work for a living. According to the ILO, to reduce this number would require an investment of US$ 106 billion in the region.

"Very little when compared with the benefits," the document asserts. The benefits from the greater future productivity of the working children who would receive better education and health are calculated to be worth US$ 341 billion.

The ILO also figures that there are around 12.3 million workers subjected to slave working conditions around the world and that 1.2 million of them (10.7%) are to be found in Latin America.

In most of the countries of the Americas, the descendants of indigenous and African ancestors represent the poorest segments of the population, the least educated, and those who hold the least stable and poorest-paying jobs. As a result they tend to be victims of marginality, social exclusion, and discrimination.

If the document is approved, the member countries will also be expected to increase by 10% the number of workers covered by collective bargaining. The countries will also be expected to improve the quality of such agreements by extending the coverage to include, for example, productivity and conflict-resolution clauses.

Labor union protection under the law should also include legal procedures and effective administrative and judicial appeals in cases of violations of rights.

The document refers to labor union freedom and greater coverage in collective bargaining as "fundamental rights." The purpose of labor union policies is "to insist on the fundamental role of rights as the arm available to social actors to regulate salaries and other working conditions, stimulate productivity, and avoid the generation of conflicts." the agenda proclaims.

Respect for labor union freedom should be the starting point of official policy. Therefore, countries should create registries of labor unions and collective bargaining.

Other means of ensuring labor rights are to improve the management of labor policies, strengthen and develop organizations to encourage social dialogue, and establish solid labor oversight authorities that will discover 50% more infractions that are unearthed at present, as well as expanding workers’ social protection, including health, retirement, and unemployment benefits, by 20% and taking steps to strengthen social dialogue and open spaces for institutional social dialogue on a voluntary basis.

Beginning this year the 35 countries are expected to put programs in effect to promote decent employment.

Agência Brasil

They were set free by the Brazilian Ministry of Labor and Employment’s (MTE) mobile inspection groups. According to MTE data, 1,411 workers were freed last year in the state.

The problem in Mato Grosso is aggravated by the struggle over land and the number of one-crop landed estates that recruit labor from other states.

That is why the Land Pastoral Commission (CPT), coordinated by the Catholic Church, considers Mato Grosso to be the state with the greatest agrarian conflict in Brazil.

On February 8, an action by the MTE’s mobile inspection group was received with gunfire by the Mato Grosso Military Police. The confrontation drew a note of condemnation from the National Commission for the Eradication of slave Labor (CONATRAE), which decided to hold its next meeting in the state.

Moreover, the governor of the state, Blairo Maggi, was invited at the time to participate in a meeting to discuss the situation, avert new confrontations, and engage in a mutual planning process.

The Minister of the Special Secretariat of Human Rights (SEDH), Paulo de Tarso Vannuchi, and the minister of Labor and Employment, Luiz Marinho, travelled to Mato Grosso Tuesday, March 7, to discuss the situation with the governor.

"The state of Mato Grosso is a state with a high incidence of complaints. That explains the decision to hold the CONATRAE meeting in Cuiabá (the state capital), as we did in Imperatriz to discuss the situation in Maranhão," Vannuchi affirmed.

On March 28, the ministers will be together again in Mato Grosso at the meeting of the CONATRAE, which is linked to the SEDH. There they will discuss a joint action plan, involving the federal and state government and the state’s productive sector, to eradicate slave labor in Mato Grosso.

Agência Brasil

The Maranhão Regional Labor Court imposed a fine of US$ 241.39 thousand (530 thousand reais) on the deputy, who is first secretary of the Chamber of Deputies’ leadership commission.

"It is a courageous step by the Labor Court system, following up on what inspectors caught in the act when they visited the properties," the friar told reporters in an interview.

He recalled that "there was a time when these occurrences did not even warrant legal proceedings." He pointed out, however, that even now the penalties do not correspond to what the law determines in cases of rural workers submitted to slave conditions:

"We have a hard time getting the courts to deal effectively with these violators. Nobody has ever been sent to jail for this crime, despite the fact that more than 18,000 workers have been rescued in the past ten years. Over 500 individuals responsible for abuses should have been convicted."

Deputy Oliveira issued a note, Wednesday, February 8, claiming that the sentence he received is unconstitutional, since degrading labor is "not covered in the labor laws."

For Brother Plassat, this argument "is a flimsy excuse, since the current version of Article 149 says that subjecting anyone to degrading labor conditions is considered slave labor. Degrading labor and slave labor are redundant."

The friar was referring to Article 149 of the Penal Code, which characterizes as a crime against individual freedom: "reducing someone to a status similar to that of a slave, whether it be by subjecting him to forced labor or a relentless work schedule, subjecting him to degrading labor conditions, or in any way limiting his freedom of movement in consequence of debts incurred with an employer or employer’s agent."

The penalty, according to the Code, is from two to eight years in prison and a fine, in addition to the penalty for having committed acts of violence.

The Land Pastoral Commission, which coordinates the Campaign to Combat Slave Labor, is associated with the Brazilian National Bishops Conference (CNBB).

Agência Brasil

Brazil’s Ministry of Labor’s Special Mobile Inspection Group freed 79 workers from slave labor in the state of Pará, last week.

Some of them were sick, all of them were living in precarious conditions and deeply in debt to the local general store. None of them enjoyed any of the rights guaranteed by Brazilian labor legislation.

According to the Ministry, the workers should receive indemnity totalling US$ 55,000 (119,740 reais). Since the Special Mobile Inspection Group was created in 1995, it has liberated 16,407 people from slave labor.

In May, the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the Ethos Institute of Social Responsibility launched the National Pact for the Eradication of Slave Labor with the aim of eliminating workers exploitation in Brazil. Representatives of the civil society, government, and entrepreneurs signed the Pact.

According to the President of the Ethos Institute, Oded Grajew, because of the Pact, several companies are already contributing for the reduction in the number of workers in conditions similar to that of slaves. These companies reject suppliers whose better prices are related to labor exploitation.

The site of the Ministry of Labor and Employment has a list of companies which at some step of their productive chain use slave labor.

The list also includes businesses that do not use slave labor, but that purchase products from companies that do. For example, a supermarket that sells products from a farm that keeps workers subject to conditions that resemble slavery.

ABr

More than 115 years after the signing of the Golden Law (1), slavery is still a reality in Brazil, especially on the sugarcane plantations.

The sugar sector is in full expansion because the programmed liberalization of international trade supports the modes of production in this country.

The big multinationals, often American and European, do not make any mistakes, and they have been investing massively in Brazil for the past few years.

However, in their failure to respect workers’ rights in this sector, they are now about to put in place a modern form of slavery and to import sugar produced under appalling conditions.

The “big ones” in the sugar industry in 2003 adopted a code of conduct for social responsibility in their companies which they actually presented as exemplary. But this code, beyond its insufficiencies and the limits inherent in this kind of action, does not apply beyond the European borders.

There is therefore a strong need to demand of the companies, and in particular of Tereos, the major foreign group in Brazil, that they extend their engagements to the whole line of companies.

The Lives of the Sugar Cutters

Antonio Malaquias is 35 years old. He is a sugarcane cutter. He borrowed money to come and look for work in the area of Piracicaba (state de São Paulo), one of the modern centers of alcohol sugar in the country.

A decision which cost him dear for he is so far indebted today that it is impossible for him to go back to his wife and his 5 children, whereas what he wanted to do was to bring money back to them.

The cutters often rise at 4:30 to take a bus which takes them over to their work place where they arrive 1 ½ hours later. Once at work, the rhythm is infernal, because the number of canes that they cut will determine their wages.

In the evening, the same 1 ½ bus trip back again. Once back at their lodgings, the workers have to prepare the food that they will take along to the field the next day, which has given them the nickname of “bóias frias” (cold chow).

The cutting season, which lasts 5 to 8 months in the year, causes the displacement of thousands of Brazilians, originating in particular from the areas in the North, the Northeast and the South.

In Piracicaba, these migrants account for 80% of the population. The large majority among them do not have any Social Security cover. Most of them are illiterate and the cutters are predominantly men, from 18 to 45 years of age.

Many fall sick because of the differences in climate conditions, without counting the industrial accidents that make many victims.

The rate of suicides in this social category is well above the average. For lack of means, they are often forced to remain at the work place once the season is over, but without work.

These infernal living conditions are denounced by Brazilian organizations like the FERAESP, Federation of the Paid Rural Employees of São Paulo, which works daily to improve the situation.

Putting an End to Slave Work

In fact, many Brazilian unemployed are reduced to slavery through a system of bound work (2). Agents for the big landowners recruit them promising good wages.

But once there, they must refund their travel costs, buy their tools and rent a lodging. They are indebted before they have even begun to work.

In 1995, the government created the Secretariat of Labor Inspection, which acts in collaboration with the police force to fight against this plague.

With President Lula coming to power, the Brazilian State reinforced this fight. But progress is difficult. It is actually necessary for a worker to denounce his employer so that the facts can be proven.

Moreover, the number of federal civil servants is insufficient. So in the end, poverty forces the unemployed to silently endure the worst possible conditions.

Nevertheless there are some positive signs. Denunciations multiply and, in 2004, the federal police force liberated a large number of people in a position “of modern slavery”, to use the proper term, in the town of Piracicaba.

It is in this area that the majority of the investments of European companies is concentrated.

The Multinationals Concerned

In preparation for the reform of the sugar market, European investments, particularly French ones, increased considerably in Brazil over the past few years.

This sector is undergoing great changes. With the merger-acquisition of Beghin Say by Union SDA, the new group, Tereos, became the major foreign group in the country, along with other companies like Louis Dreyfus, the German companies Sudzucker and Nordzucker, British Sugar, Swiss Glencore and Alcotra and American Cargill.

However, most of the slave work problems are related to the subcontracting of labor, which is a common practice in this sector. The multinationals that way get out of their responsibilities.

However, in 2003, the European sugar industry in a very high-profile way committed themselves to a voluntary process of social and environmental responsibility by adopting a code of conduct.

Even if this voluntary step is insufficient to guarantee social and environmental conditions that would be satisfactory in this sector (3), this code could still help the trade unions in the South to obtain improvements.

On condition however that the text is not limited to Europe which is the case at the present time! It is thus essential that the multinationals concerned, first of all Tereos which has room for maneuver and has substantial possibilities of influence, respect their own engagements for the whole line of companies starting with the sugarcane plantations.

(1) Brazil has “imported” millions of African slaves to develop the raw materials and tropical products that are of interest to the “Colonial Mother”, Portugal. After independence (1822), slavery continued for the profit of the rich landowners. The “Golden Law” which officially put an end to this was signed in 1888.
 .
(2) Cf Call n°236 of Network-Solidarity (May 24, 2001): Brazil – so as not to finish as a slave. Between 25,000 and 30,000 workers are probably in a position of slavery in Brazil.

(3) Cf “Codes of control, Tool for social progress or an advertising ploy?”, published by Interdependent People, 2004, 114 p. The reform of the sugar market of the European Union, the Common Organization of the Sugar Market (OCM-sugar) ensured stable export earnings for a small number of ACP countries (Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific).

But the export subsidies of European sugar (beets) caused a dumping on the other markets, and a fall in the prices. The equilibrium in the sugar market is changing considerably on a world level. The complete liberalization of the European market is planned for 2009.

Moreover, the complaint lodged by Brazil, Thailand and Australia with the World Trade Organization (WTO) against the European sugar policy ran out on April 28 of last year, and this will require new negotiations.

These changes were anticipated by the multinationals which invested massively in the countries of the South to profit from liberalization.

Translated by Axis of Logic Correspondent, Siv O’Neall, Lyon, France

Cyber Acteurs
http://www.cyberacteurs.org

Brazil’s 2nd Labor Court of the city of Marabá (Pará state), in the Amazonian region, ordered today the Lima Araújo Agricultural company to pay a fine of US$ 1.21 million (3 million reais) for enslaving around 180 workers.

The firm even kept the workers living in corrals. The fine for collective moral damages is the biggest one ever determined by Brazilian courts in cases such as this.

The judgment can still be appealed, but, if it is upheld, the money will go to the Workers’ Assistance Fund (Fundo de Amparo ao Trabalhador, FAT).

This unprecedented ruling was made by Judge Jorge Ramos Vieira in a public civil suit brought by the Public Ministry of Labor Defense.

In addition to the fine, the judge sentenced the Lima Araújo company to obey certain rules to avoid the practice of slavery.

Among them, signing employees’ working papers and ceasing to discount 25% of their salaries for food expenses.

“The company will immediately have its bank and fiscal confidentiality broken, its property blocked, and US$ 1.21 million in its owners bank accounts preventively impounded,” says the prosecutor, Loris Rocha Pereira.

In 2004, an agreement between the Public Ministry of Labor Defense, the Labor court system, and the Jorge Mutran company resulted in the collection of a US$ 400 thousand (1.3 million reais) indemnity payment for the practice of slave labor. The firm maintained workers under slave-like labor conditions on a farm in Marabá.

Secretariat of Labor Inspection advisor Marcelo Campos says that 200 workers were set free this week in the south of the state of Pará and 30 in the north of the state of Tocantins.

“In general, slave workers are those subjected to a system of indebtedness by listing everything they need to feed themselves in order to work. Through this process they are prevented from leaving the property, be it through indebtedness or violence suffered at the hands of the owner or his hirelings.”

Agência Brasil

The implantation of the Plan for the Eradication of Slave Labor, announced yesterday by Brazil’s Ministry of Agrarian Development (Ministério do Desenvolvimento Agrário, MDA) and the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária, Incra), will start in two municipalities and one region and later be extended to the rest of the country.

The municipalities that were chosen are Açailândia, in the state of Maranhão (MA), and Barras, in the state of Piauí­ (PI). The region that was chosen comprises nine municipalities in the south of Pará. The areas were selected because they are where the largest numbers of duped workers are concentrated.

“What we are providing, therefore, are better and stronger prevention programs, offering income and work quality alternatives to these populations. Without, at the same time, neglecting the development of rehabilitation programs that permit rescued workers to gain a livelihood,” said the Minister of Agrarian Development, Miguel Rossetto.

The inauguration of the Plan for the Eradication of Slave Labor is part of a national plan launched by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in March, 2003, to eradicate slave labor in the country by the end of 2006.

Data from the Land Pastoral Commission (CPT), an organization connected to the Catholic Church, indicate that there may be as many as 25 thousand rural workers in various Brazilian states subjected to working conditions that resemble slavery. The highest incidence is in the Northern region.

Agência Brasil

Since 1996 the Brazilian government has been able to rescue 930 thousand working children in 2,790 cities. Data from the most recent National Household Sample Survey (PNAD), conducted each year by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), indicates that there are still, however, over 2 million working children in the country.

According to Margarida Munguba, coordinator of the Program for the Erradication of Child Labor (PETI) in the Ministry of Social Development and Hunger Alleviation, the measures to combat child labor must be “permanent.”

Munguba observed that child labor depends upon the dynamics of industrial and agricultural production. She gave as an example the fact that it is sometimes advantageous to work in a shoe factory that has just closed a big export deal, which attracts many families who are looking for employment.

“In agriculture, the demand for workers is greater at harvest time, and children end up being drawn in. That is why the war on child labor must be permanent,” the coordinator explained.

She recalled that, for child labor to be erradicated, the consciousness of families must be raised.

“Child labor cannot be fought only through the payment of a grant. Families have to be shown alternative ways to live, by inserting them in programs to generate income, by encouraging them to participate in literacy programs, by improving the education of parents as well as children,” she added.

Piauí­, Maranhão, Pernambuco, and Paraí­ba are the states in which child labor is most prevalent. The federal government’s goal is to end child labor in the country in 2006.

Agência Brasil