Two different approaches that fail to protect Brazilian or British agricultural workers

Vitor Filgueiras

Brazil and the United Kingdom are very different regarding the levels of working conditions achieved historically, but both have faced the same strategies to undermine public regulation lately. The failure of different approaches provides clues about the solutions for similar problems.

Many cases of labour exploitation have been uncovered, including slave-like conditions, in both countries. These exploitative conditions are typically found in the agricultural sector, and most of them are associated with outsourcing/subcontracting arrangements.

In Brazil, almost 90% (44) of the 50 largest cases of slave-like conditions uncovered by public institutions between 2010 and 2014 involved workers hired by main companies through intermediaries. These cases cover different regions, company sizes, and intermediaries’ appearance, ranging from gatos (‘cats’, as labour suppliers are called in the Brazilian rural area) to formal contractors. In the UK, labour exploitation and regulation of labour in rural areas are strongly linked to outsourcing, which is predominantly arranged through so-called gangmasters. Between 2013 and 2015, 900 victims of labour exploitation were assisted by the Gangmasters’ Licensing Authority (GLA) (GLA CEO 2015).