cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/8229390
Brazil’s labour ministry on Tuesday added Chinese electric vehicle (EV) giant BYD (Build Your Dreams) to a registry of employers found to have subjected workers to conditions analogous to slavery, limiting access to state financing and increasing reputational risks in its most important market outside China.
The Ministry of Labour and Employment published the updated Cadastro de Empregadores, commonly known as the “dirty list”, adding 169 employers in the latest semi-annual revision.
BYD Auto do Brasil Ltda was included following the conclusion of an administrative process stemming from a December 2024 rescue operation at the company’s factory construction site in Camacari, in the northeastern state of Bahia.
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Brazilian workers told auditors that their Chinese counterparts normally worked seven days a week, including public holidays, and that supervisors had given them the days off only because the inspection team was coming.
At one of four dormitories examined, inspectors found 107 passports locked in an administrative cabinet labelled in Mandarin as “security”; some had been held since August 2024, leaving workers without access to their own travel documents on weekends and outside business hours.
Armed private security guards enforced a lockdown, sealing the gates after dinner and forbidding workers from leaving without supervisor authorisation.
Beds lacked mattresses or rested on foam padding roughly three centimetres thick; food was stored on the floor alongside personal belongings, with cockroaches and rats moving through sleeping areas.
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In one facility, 31 workers shared a single bathroom, forcing them to wake at 4am to queue before their 5.30am departure for the site, and the kitchen was deemed unfit for use by inspectors.
On the construction site, there were only eight chemical toilets for the entire workforce, and workers had no sunscreen despite visible skin damage from prolonged sun exposure.
Workers received only a nominal living allowance in Brazil, in some cases less than US$200 a month, disbursed only with supervisor approval, and investigators found that around 60% of their wages were withheld and remitted directly to accounts in China.
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The federal labour prosecutor’s office said there were also indications of fraud in the immigration documents presented by the carmaker’s contractors, as the Chinese workers had been brought to Brazil on visas issued for specialised technical services when the men were in fact construction labourers.
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Brazilian officials identified a contractor network centred on China JinJiang Construction Brazil Ltda and a second firm, later renamed Tecmonta Equipamentos Inteligentes Brasil, both of which worked exclusively on BYD’s Camacari site.
Brazilian labour law holds the contracting company responsible for conditions imposed by its suppliers, a principle that auditors applied directly to BYD.
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