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On
Tuesday, the Labor Prosecutor’s Office released videos of the
dorms where the construction workers were staying, which showed
beds with no mattresses and rooms without any places for the
workers to store their personal belongings.
In a statement issued Monday, the prosecutor’s office said the
workers had been hired in China by Jinjiang Construction Brazil,
one of the contractors on the site, which is located in Camaçari,
a city in the Salvador metropolitan region.
Officials said Jinjiang Construction Brazil had confiscated the
workers' passports and held 60% of their wages. Those who quit
would be forced to pay the company for their airfare from China,
and for their return ticket, the statement said.
Efforts to reach Jinjiang Construction in Brazil were
unsuccessful as a contact phone number and email address were
not immediately available.
BYD, which stands for Build Your Dreams, is one of the world’s
largest producers of electric cars. The company said on Monday
night that it will “immediately terminate the contract” with the
Jinjian group and is “studying other appropriate measures.”
BYD said that the Jinjiang workers will be housed in nearby
hotels for the time being, and that they will not suffer from
the decision to stop work at the site. The company said that
over the past few weeks it had been revising working conditions
at the construction site and had told its contractors that
“adjustments” had to be made.
Prosecutors said the sanitary situation at BYD’s site in
Camaçari was especially critical, with only one toilet for every
31 workers, forcing them to wake up at 4 a.m. to line up and get
ready to leave for work at 5:30 a.m.
Under Brazilian law, slavery-like conditions are characterized
by submission to forced labor or exhausting working hours,
subjection to degrading working conditions and restriction of
the worker’s freedom of movement.
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