Prosecutors find workers in 'slavery like' conditions at Chinese car company site in Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — A task force led by Brazilian prosecutors said it rescued 163 Chinese nationals working in “slavery-like" conditions at a construction site in northeastern Brazil, where Chinese electric vehicle company BYD is building a factory.

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.