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A. LE FLOCH
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva vetoed a measure Friday that activists feared could worsen the plight of debt slaves in Latin America's largest nation.
The bill aims to unify two federal tax departments and eliminate bureaucracy, but it also includes an amendment that would strip government auditors of some power to investigate relationships between employers and employees, and to fine abusers.
"The amendment interferes with labor procedures. It prevents investigation," Finance Minister Guido Mantega told the government news service Agencia Brasil. "Besides, it is not clearly explained and allows room for legal controversy."
Activists said that amendment would restrict the government's ability to fight debt slavery — a common practice in the Amazon rain forest, where workers are often lured to remote jungle ranches with promises of well-paying jobs and then charged exorbitant prices for food and transportation, turning them into virtual slaves.
Mantega said the government will send a new bill to Congress that allows labor inspectors to examine work conditions and relations between employers and workers, but with provisions that allow employers time to prepare a defense if suspected of irregularities.
Mantega said the decree would honor the bill's true intent without eliminating the ability of Labor Ministry auditors to immediately impose fines and penalties on ranches found to be using slave labor — one of the government's strongest tools in the fight against debt slave.
Brazilian media organizations lobbied in favor of the amendment on labor auditors, seeking more flexibility in the way they employ freelancers.
The bill would have allowed only judges to impose penalties in labor disputes. Since legal cases typically take years to work their way through Brazilian courts, the bill would make it much harder to punish violators.
The Labor Ministry has been monitoring farmers and ranchers with a group it calls the Mobile Verification Task Force. Founded in 1995, the group says it has freed more than 21,000 workers from debt slave conditions at more than 1,600 farms across Brazil.
The Catholic Church's Land Pastoral estimates there are currently some 25,000 workers living in slave-like conditions in Brazil, most of them in the Amazon.