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Labor Relations and Slavery in Contemporary Brazil: A New Digital Collection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2020

Silvia Hunold Lara
Affiliation:
Centro de Pesquisa em História Social da Cultura/Universidade Estadual de Campinas
Nauber Gavski da Silva
Affiliation:
Centro de Pesquisa em História Social da Cultura/Universidade Estadual de Campinas

Extract

There are multiple public agencies in Brazil that operate for the purpose of inspection, investigation, and the levying of penalties for the crime of exploitation of labor in conditions analogous to slavery: These include the civil police, Federal Police, the Ministry of Labor, the Regional Labor Tribunals, the Public Ministry of Labor, the Federal Public Ministry, and the state-level public ministries, with branches that encompass the entire nation and others that focus on specific regions. The activities of each one of these entities is recorded in different types of documents that are processed at various levels and can cover considerable amounts of time, depending on the deadlines and procedures involved. While the volume of this documentation is quite substantial, these records are not especially well known or widely used.

Type
Reports from the Field
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc., 2020

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References

NOTES

1. Decreto lei n. 2.848 de 7 de dezembro de 1940. Available at http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/decreto-lei/Del2848compilado.htm. Viewed  August 14, 2018.s

2. Lei n. 10.803 de 11 de dezembro de 2003. Available at http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/LEIS/2003/L10.803.htm#art149. Viewed August 14, 2018.

3. Lei 7.627, de Nov. 10, 1987, authorizes the Labor Tribunals to eliminate “through incineration of mechanical destruction of by some other effective means, the court cases that have been closed for more than five years, counting from the date of the filing of the complaint.” Available at http://www2.camara.leg.br/legin/fed/lei/1980-1987/lei-7627-10-novembro-1987-367593-publicacaooriginal-1-pl.html. Viewed August 14, 2018.

4. Portaria n. 447 de 19 de setembro de 2014, do Ministério do Trabalho e Emprego. Available at http://trabalho.gov.br/seguranca-e-saude-no-trabalho/legislacao/item/3398-portaria-447-2014. Viewed 14, August 2018.

5. MTE, Sistema Federal de Inspeção do Trabalho – Web. Available at https://sfitweb.mte.gov.br/sfitweb/private/pages/principal.jsf. Viewed August 14, 2018.

7. Observatório Digital do Trabalho Escravo no Brasil (Digital Observatory of Slave Labor in Brazil): 2017. Available at http://observatorioescravo.mpt.mp.br. Viewed August 26, 2018.

8. Repórter Brasil was founded in 2001 by journalists, social scientists, and educators. See http://reporterbrasil.org.br/. Consult “Pesquisa [Research].” Available at http://reporterbrasil.org.br/tipos-de-material/publicacoes/. Viewed August 14, 2018.

9. Grupo de Pesquisa Trabalho Escravo Contemporâneo (GPTEC). Available at http://www.gptec.cfch.ufrj.br/. Viewed August 14, 2018.

11. This is the case, for example, of the research based on inspection reports from the Division of Inspection and Eradication of Slave Labor/ Divisão de Inspeção para a Erradicação do Trabalho Escravo (DETRAE) do Ministério do Trabalho e da Superintendência Regional do Trabalho e Emprego de Minas Gerais, published por HADDAD, Carlos H. B. e MIRAGLIA, Lívia M. M. (coords.). Trabalho Escravo. Entre os achados da fiscalização e as respostas judiciais. Florianópolis: Tribo da Ilha, 2018.

13. Cf. Portaria n. 12/2010, March 2, 2010 and Avisos de eliminação de documentos 01/2010 (with a list of 3,758 court cases eliminated completely), 02/2010 (with a list of 3,008 cases, to be partially eliminated) both September 13, 2010.

14. The preliminary contacts were made by Rebecca Scott, of the University of Michigan, and Silvia Lara, of the Universidade Estadual de Campinas, with the then Chief Attorney of the MPT-15, Dra. Catarina von Zuben.

15. Projeto Temático “Entre a escravidão e o fardo da liberdade: os trabalhadores e as formas de exploração do trabalho em perspectiva histórica”. Fapesp, processo n. 2013/21979-5. Available at http://www.cecult.ifch.unicamp.br/pf-cecult/public-files/projetos/8931/projeto_tematico.pdf#overlay-context=projetos/esfarli/resumo-projeto. Viewed August 14,  2018. The digitalization and processing of this document collection was formalized through an agreement with the Ministério Público do Trabalho – 15ª Região e a UNICAMP, signed in September 2014.

16. During the development of the project, it was decided to incorporate into the set of legal cases those that were finalized through 2010, so that it would encompass a period of two complete decades.

17. Acervo MPT15. Available at https://www.cecult.ifch.unicamp.br/bases-dados/ampt/apresentacao. Viewed August 20, 2018.

18. The classification of an investigatory process as relating to slave labor does not mean, however, that the parties being denounced had been confirmed as committing such infractions since the investigators could decide to abandon the classification initially adopted.