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 The company covertly monitored its own workers as well as
prominent union leaders of the era. One of VW's targets was Luiz
Inacio Lula da Silva, who went on to become Brazil's president from
2003 to 2010 and remains one of its most influential politicians.
The documents were recently discovered in government archives by a
special "truth commission" that, at the request of Brazil's current
president, Dilma Rousseff, is investigating abuses that occurred
during the 1964-1985 regime.
Reuters reported last month that the commission found signs that
dozens of companies, including Volkswagen <VOWG_p.DE> and other
foreign automakers, helped the military identify union activists in
the 1980s to suppress labor unrest.
Now, according to the commission's leaders, 20 pages of documents
marked "confidential" that Volkswagen gave to the military in 1983
and 1984 provide the clearest proof yet that some companies went
further - gathering their own intelligence on union activities and
sharing it with authorities.
In the documents, Volkswagen provided extensive accounts of more
than a dozen union meetings in Greater São Paulo. The company
relayed workers' plans for strikes as well as their demands for
better salaries and working conditions.
The company reported the names of Volkswagen workers who attended
union events and, in at least two cases, noted the make and license
plate numbers of vehicles present.
Volkswagen also reported the showing of a socialist-themed film at a
union headquarters; the contents of flyers distributed outside its
factory doors and the names of those distributing them; and an
incident in which "several addicted workers were caught smoking
marijuana."
Such information was typically used by police to monitor, harass and
detain union activists in the hope of discouraging future unrest,
said Sebastião Neto, a member of the National Truth Commission. He
cited testimony the group has gathered from workers who met with
such treatment.
"These documents show with exceptional clarity how companies
expected the government to help them solve their problems with their
workers," said Neto, who is overseeing the commission's research of
links between companies and the military.
Companies could face civil lawsuits or demands for reparations if
they are found to have contributed to human rights violations of
their workers during the dictatorship, some Brazilian prosecutors
have said.
Others doubt that the evidence uncovered so far would be sufficient
to mount a court case. They say the investigation's true value lies
in building a fuller account of past abuses so that Brazil, now a
stable democracy and economic power, never repeats the mistakes of
the dark period.
The documents were found in Brazil’s national archive by
professional historians who were hired by a local union to work in
coordination with the National Truth Commission. Neto said they
would be included in the group’s final report, due in December.
VW VOWS INVESTIGATION
In response to questions from Reuters about the new documents,
Volkswagen repeated a vow it first made last month to "investigate
all indications" that employees provided information to the
military.
No other large company with operations in Brazil has yet publicly
committed to such an investigation.
"Volkswagen is acknowledged to be a model for coming to terms with
its corporate history," the company said in a statement. "The
company will handle this topic in the same way."
Volkswagen has repeatedly surfaced in the truth commission's probe
as a prolific supplier of information. It wasn't the only company
that helped the military track union activities, however,
researchers and academics say. The dictatorship suppressed workers'
wages as a central part of its economic growth model and saw strikes
as a communist threat to stability. Countless companies faced
pressure to collaborate.
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Volkswagen was one of 19 Brazilian and foreign companies that
attended regular meetings with military and police officials in the
Paraiba River Valley, an industrial area some 55 miles (90 km) east
of São Paulo. The meetings began in July 1983 at a time of growing
labor unrest in the area.
At the meetings, the companies exchanged information about coming
strikes and mass layoffs, according to notes of the meetings made by
Brazil's Air Force. In the Air Force minutes, which were provided
to Reuters by Truth Commission researchers, Volkswagen was the only
company recorded to have submitted its own extended written accounts
of union activities. It did so on at least three occasions.
The documents were attached as an annex to the minutes. They don't
state how Volkswagen obtained the information. But the intimate
level of detail suggests the company may have sent security
personnel to monitor union events or received information from
sympathetic workers, researchers say.
For example, Volkswagen reported on the showing of a film about the
Russian Revolution at a union headquarters. In a memo, VW described
how workers blocked the doors to the projection room and deactivated
the building's elevator "to avoid a possible seizure of the film by
the Censorship Department of the Federal Police."
The memo noted that "warm wine, popcorn and chocolate" were
available at the screening, and it recorded the name of the worker
who sold them.
Volkswagen also extensively documented a union rally of June 19,
1983, that featured Lula. He was not a company employee but was a
rising star in the regional labor movement at the time. Volkswagen
quoted Lula as criticizing the "lack of shame of the government" and
encouraging workers to stop paying into a government housing fund as
a gesture of protest.
The company recorded the license plate number of a bus that carried
workers to Brasilia after the rally, and the name of the company
that operated it.
A spokesman for Lula declined to comment on the documents.
Geovaldo Gomes dos Santos, a former quality control official who
retired from Volkswagen in 2003, was named in the documents as
having organized a meeting on June 21, 1983, to discuss a coming
regional conference of metalworkers.
Dos Santos's name also appeared in a separate "black list" of union
activists in Greater São Paulo that police assembled in the early
1980s, the existence of which Reuters revealed last month.
Told that he also appears in the new set of documents, Dos Santos
said: "That's absurd."
He said that in light of the information, he may try to sue
Volkswagen or its former executives for "moral damage" - a broad
offense under Brazilian law roughly akin to harassment.
"I don't want any money," he said. "It's just so disgusting, what
they did. We weren't doing anything abnormal. Why were they spying
on us? Unions should just be a normal part of capitalism."
(Editing by Todd Benson and Michael Williams)
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