SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil’s labor court docket on Friday ordered Volkswagen to pay 165 million reais (about $30 million) for collective ethical damages after staff have been subjected to slave-like circumstances at a company-owned farm within the Amazon throughout the Seventies and Eighties. Prosecutors mentioned it’s the largest such reparation within the nation’s historical past.
The Labor Prosecutor’s Workplace launched an investigation in 2019 after acquiring intensive documentation from a neighborhood priest who had tracked the case for many years. Following additional inquiries and witness testimony, prosecutors formally charged Volkswagen in 2024.
The court docket accepted the fees that a whole bunch of staff have been subjected to degrading circumstances between 1974 and 1986 at a farm in Para state, owned by Volkswagen by means of a subsidiary. The farm was used for cattle ranching and logging.
In line with court docket filings, about 300 staff have been employed beneath irregular contracts to clear the forest and put together pastures. They have been monitored by armed guards, lived in precarious housing, obtained inadequate meals and have been pressured to remain on the farm beneath a system of debt bondage. No medical care was offered, even to those that contracted malaria.
“These practices constituted one of many largest circumstances of slave labor exploitation in Brazil’s current historical past,” the Labor Prosecutor’s Workplace mentioned in a press release.
In his ruling, Choose Otavio Bruno da Silva Ferreira mentioned proof confirmed the farm belonged to Volkswagen and that circumstances met the authorized definition of slave labor.
“Slavery is a ‘current previous,’ as a result of its marks stay in Brazilian society, particularly in labor relations,” Ferreira wrote. He added that the legacy of Brazil’s colonial slave system continues to form social buildings and that recovering this reminiscence is crucial to understanding present realities and guiding antidiscrimination judgments.
Volkswagen’s Brazilian headquarters mentioned in a press release it is going to attraction the choice. The corporate mentioned that in its 72 years of operation in Brazil, it has “constantly defended the ideas of human dignity and strictly complied with all relevant labor legal guidelines and laws.”
“Volkswagen reaffirms its unwavering dedication to social duty, which is intrinsically linked to its conduct as a authorized entity and employer,” the corporate mentioned.
Brazil enslaved extra folks from Africa than another nation, based on estimates from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Commerce database. It was the final nation within the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery, in 1888.
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