Insight-Slavery in Brazil's Ethanol Sector Blights Drive for Cleaner Fuel

by Fabio Teixeira (Reuters) * Seven ethanol companies fined for slave labor since 2016; * Firms are part of Brazil’s fuel decarbonization program; * Government says scheme does not address labor issues -- W hen manual laborer Alison Moreira dos Santos moved across Brazil for a job on a sugarcane plantation in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais in March, he expected to work hard.

Dos Santos had worked for a landowner supplying sugarcane to Usina Coruripe, a company that produces ethanol, a biofuel.

Following a tip-off, labor inspectors raided the plantation in late April. Dos Santos was part of a group of 10 workers who were ultimately adjudged by the officials to have been trafficked and subjected to “slavery-like” conditions.

Among the abuses identified by the authorities, the laborers lived in a garage. They lacked access to a bathroom while they worked and were not given protective gear, as mandated by law.

In the case of dos Santos, he had worn an ill-fitting pair of boots he found, causing a wound on his right ankle that became infected, according to labor inspectors and his family.

Dos Santos was not at the plantation when the raid took place, because days earlier, he had returned home to the northeastern state of Maranhão, where he died of sepsis as a result of the infection on his ankle, his wife said.

Anti-slavery and green advocates said the case highlights shortcomings with a government sustainable biofuel program - of which Coruripe is a member - and a rise in unscrupulous subcontractors trafficking people to work in the ethanol sector.

Labor inspectors determined that Coruripe was ultimately responsible for the abuse of the 10 workers as their true employer - due to its business arrangement with the plantation’s landowner - and fined the company for engaging in slave labor.

Government-led raids seeking to crack down on labor abuses in the supply chains of ethanol companies have rescued at least 352 workers on sugarcane plantations to-date this year.

The sugarcane industry has long been a top target for labor inspectors who say that slave labor is endemic. Since 1995, authorities have rescued more than 8,000 workers in the sector.

Since 2016, seven firms in the program have been fined for slave labor, with three of them - including Coruripe - penalized this year, show labor inspectorate reports obtained by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Coruripe also has a certification from Bonsucro, an international non-profit that promotes sustainable sugarcane production, but which Brazil’s labor prosecutors have criticized for not stopping abuses on plantations the group has certified.

Bonsucro told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that some of the plantations that Coruripe sources sugarcane from are certified, but not the one where dos Santos had worked and which was raided in April.

Bonsucro said it had signed a deal in 2021 with Brazil’s Labor Prosecutor’s Office to revise its production and certification standards, which requires firms to have a robust human rights risk assessment and management plan for their entire operations.

In Brazil, slavery is defined as forced labor, but also covers debt bondage, degrading work conditions, long hours that pose a risk to health and any work that violates human dignity.

RenovaBio - which covers more than 300 biofuel companies - is touted by the industry as a sustainable program that will help Brazil decarbonize its fuel supply chain.

But while the system rewards companies for making low-emission fuel, it lacks checks on the environmental and labor standards applied to how ethanol is produced, said Ricardo Fujii, coordinator for conservation at green group WWF-Brazil.

In 2017, the same year that RenovaBio was signed into law, Brazil’s Congress also passed a bill that made it legal for companies to subcontract labor for their core businesses.

This led to a rise in the number of slavery cases identified at sugarcane plantations as ethanol firms started subcontracting workers, said Maurício Krepsky, head of DETRAE, the Brazilian government’s anti-slavery department.

But such subcontracting is often illegal, with plantation owners and recruiters serving as middlemen or a front for ethanol companies who are the workers’ ultimate employers and bear responsibility for their rights, Krepsky added.

The authorities found that the workers were living in degrading conditions in lodgings provided by the subcontractors.