Workers who were rescued after working like slaves at a Brazilian coffee farm have filed a lawsuit against Starbucks, a global coffee company.
The plaintiffs are Brazilians who were rescued by Brazilian authorities from virtually slavery on farms.
One of them, “John,” got a job at a coffee farm that takes 16 hours by bus as soon as he turned 16.
However, the farm did not comply with the promised employment conditions and began to abuse him ‘unpaid’.
Even protective gear, such as boots and gloves, had to work from 5:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. in the hot sun and lunch was only 20 minutes.
John was only freed from overwork after Brazilian authorities raided the farm in June last year.
Authorities concluded in the report that John had “child labor” in dangerous conditions and that the farmworkers were victims of trafficking in the same boat as “slavery.”
“The fact that Starbucks is paid about $6 for a cup of coffee and that the company is getting coffee harvested by forced and child workers is really beyond criminality,” said Terrence Colingsworth, IRA CEO.
In a related development, the NGO Coffee Watch filed a petition with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on the 24th to ban the import of coffee produced by forced labor in Brazil by other major companies such as Starbucks, Nestle, Dunkin, Illy and McDonald’s.
In its petition, Coffee Watch stressed that Brazilian coffee farms often exploit labor, and that John’s case is just the tip of the iceberg.
The Guardian noted that Brazilian plantation owners would have to pay fines if caught in a forced labor crackdown and could be placed on the so-called “Dirty List,” which is subject to the government’s attention, but companies such as Starbucks continue to buy coffee from such farms.
Brazil has a dark history of becoming the world’s largest coffee producer by putting hundreds of thousands of Africans and Afro-Brazilians (Brazilians of sub-Saharan African descent) brought to the slave trade in the 16th and 19th centuries into coffee farms.
Although Brazil’s slavery was abolished in 1888, two-thirds of workers are still rescued from farms around the country after suffering a similar environment to slaves, according to the Guardian.
SAM KIM
US ASIA JOURNAL
