Volkswagen Brazil Ordered to Pay Millions for Abusing Workers

Last month, The Washington Post published a story that was literally decades in the making. In it, journalists Terrence McCoy and Marina Dias described the work done by by a Catholic priest, Ricardo Rezende Figueira, to raise awareness of labor abuses committed by Volkswagen Brazil beginning almost 50 years ago. Now, a legal judgment in the case has been reached — and it’s put Volkswagen’s Brazilian subsidiary on the hook for the equivalent of $30 million.

As McCoy and Dias explained in their original article, a subsidiary of Volkwagen Brazil was part of an effort to clear the rainforest for cattle ranching. They describe the conditions under which employees hired to take part in these efforts as “geographically isolated, ensnared by debt, sickened by malaria and forced to toil under threat of violence.” McCoy and Dias also describe the two contractors hired to oversee the ranching efforts as “among the Amazon frontier’s most notorious and brutal figures.”

Volkswagen Brazil’s ranching efforts spanned 1974 to 1986, and the phrasing that corporate leaders used to describe the initiative, according to the Post, sounded idealistic: clearing forest to make way for cattle which could reduce hunger overall. The reality, unfortunately, sounds far bleaker. And now, after decades, there’s been an official response to these harmful working conditions.

On Friday, August 29, a court in Brazil held Volkswagen Brazil liable for their contractors’ actions. In another article for The Washington Post, McCoy describes the court’s ruling — which referenced “contemporary slave labor” — as well as Volkswagen Brazil’s plans to appeal.

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The legal case was brought by Brazil’s Labor Ministry, and built on the work that Ricardo Rezende Figueira had done in interviewing workers abused as part of this system. The $30 million will go to an anti-slave labor organization. These abuses were not the only ones taking place in this part of Brazil in the waning decades of the 20th century. But, as the Post‘s reporting points out, this is the first case of a corporation being held liable for what its proxies did.

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…