Sao Paulo (AP) – Brazil On Friday, the Labor Court ordered Volkswagen to pay 165 million rings (about 30 million dollars) for collective morale after the workers were subjected to conditions similar to slaves on a company owned by the company in the Amazon during the 1970s and 1980s. Prosecutors said that it is more like this in the country’s history.
the Public Prosecutor Office She launched an investigation in 2019 after obtaining extensive documents from a local priest who followed the case for decades. After more investigations and testimonies of witnesses, the officials officially accused Volkswagen in 2024.
The court accepted the charges that hundreds of workers were subjected to insulting conditions between 1974 and 1986 on a farm in the state of the paragraph, owned by Volkswagen through a subsidiary. The farm has been used to raise and record livestock.
According to the court’s files, about 300 workers were appointed under irregular contracts to cleanse the forest and prepare pastures. They were monitored by the armed guards, who lived in unstable housing, did not receive enough food and were forced to stay on the farm under a system of debt slavery. Medical care has not been provided, even to those who contracted on malaria.
“These practices were formed one of the largest cases of exploitation of delicate labor in the history of modern Brazil,” the party’s public prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
In his rule, Judge Autavio Bruno da Silva Ferrera said that the evidence confirmed that the farm is affiliated with Volkswagen and that the conditions had achieved the legal definition of slave employment.
Ferrera wrote: “Slavery is the” current past “, because its signs remain in the Brazilian society, especially in work relations.” He added that The legacy of the colonial slave system for Brazil The formation of social structures continues and that restoring this memory is essential to understanding the current facts and directing anti -discrimination provisions.
The Brazilian Volkswagen headquarters said in a statement that it would appeal the decision. The company said that within 72 years of its work in Brazil, “I constantly defended the principles of human dignity and strict compliance with all the laws and regulations in force.”
The company said: “Volkswagen reaffirms its steadfast commitment to social responsibility, which is fundamentally related to its behavior as a legal entity and employer.”
Brazil has enslaved more people than Africa than any other country, according to estimates of the slave trade database across the Atlantic. It was the last country in the western hemisphere to cancel slavery, in 1888.
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