According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), for every 20,000 economically active individuals, there needs to be one labor inspector. In Brazil, this number would be 5,441 inspectors. With 1,888 professionals, however, the country is far from reaching this ideal number.
The most recent civil service examination to select new labor inspectors was in 2013. Since then, some professionals have retired, while the country’s workforce has increased.
As a result, slave labor cases go unpunished. “We are living in a time when there is a lot of non-compliance with labor legislation, with many workers having their rights violated,” says Rosa Jorge, director of the National Union of Labor Inspectors (Sinat, in Portuguese). “Employers know that sometimes there are few inspectors, and they won't get to their company,” she warns.
With a workforce of almost 2 million people and only 20 labor inspectors, the Brazilian state of Amazonas has an average of one inspector for every 96,000 workers, placing it at the top of the list of states with a lack of these professionals.
Although it is number 15 in the ranking of the labor force considering all the 26 Brazilian federative units, only two cases of slave labor have been recorded in the state in recent years, according to the most recent edition of the so-called dirty list of slave labor, published by the Ministry of Labor and Employment.
For those who work in Amazonas, there is no doubt that the low number of cases is a consequence of the lack of inspection. “The inspection of illegal mining activities in the Amazon region needs to be done jointly with the Ministry of Labor, so that the tax audit is also there,” says Francisco Alan Santos, an agent of the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT, in Portuguese). “Public agents, like the Federal Police, identify environmental crimes. However, it is common not to identify the crime of exploiting slave labor,” he says.
For him, who has been following up on allegations of slave labor in northern Brazil for 14 years, the presence of more inspectors could bring visibility to other situations, increasing the number of flagrant cases.
According to Jomar Lima, a tax auditor and head of the Ministry of Labor and Employment's inspection in the state of Pará, only tax auditors are authorized to detect a situation of slave labor and lead the rescue of workers. In addition to the shortage of professionals, the long distances in the northern region of the country are another factor that makes their work difficult. “They are far away. Our largest number of complaints is precisely in this area, which encompasses farming, cattle raising and forestry,” he says.
According to CPT data, cattle raising is the activity that employs the most slave labor in Brazil’s northern region. Between 1995 and 2024, 12,977 people working in this kind of labor activity were freed. In a recent case, in April 2023, five people – including a child and a teenager – were rescued from a farm in the town of Senador José Porfírio, Pará. The workers were only found because one of them walked miles into the forest until he managed to use a cell phone to call for help.
“Geographical isolation is a characteristic of how difficult it often is for inspectors to reach the area,” Francisco points out. He said that, from where they were, it would take three to four days on foot to get to the urban center of the town,” he recalls.
In August, the federal government will hold a civil service exam to fill 900 vacancies for labor inspectors. Even so, Brazil will be 2,600 professionals short of meeting the ILO's target and being able to expand its inspection of slave labor.
Edited by: Nicolau Soares
