“If it is true that mega events offer an opportunity for social inclusion of workers through job creation and the expansion of labor rights, this has not been the Brazilian reality.” said National Coalition of Local Committees for a Peoples’ World Cup and Olympics. Whether they are laborers at infrastructure projects, or informal workers who have been “suppressed” by regulations that ban them from working in World Cup commercial zones, the report states, “there is an observable pattern towards increased precariousness of labor” perpetuated by large companies and consortia as well as government agencies that coddle the corporations and fail to hold them accountable.
Last September, the AP reported that after the construction company OAS forced the workers to pay $250 each for the privilege of getting hired for a construction project at the international airport in São Paolo, according to labor officials, "many had to sleep on thin mattresses spread out on the floor and lacked for water, refrigerators and stoves. … While the workers apparently were not held against their will, they were forced to live in conditions so miserable that the Labor Ministry defines them as 'slave-like.'" For their trouble, they were reportedly offered $3,000 in compensation by the company before being sent home. Much like overseas migrant laborers (as in Qatar’s massive scandals in its preparation for the 2022 World Cup ), Brazil’s internal labor trafficking networks use recruiters to lure poor rural workers to faraway worksites, where they are extremely vulnerable to exploitation or coercion.
Many Brazilians have been directly uprooted by the projects through forced evictions. In 2011 United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing Raquel Rolnik sharply criticized “what seems to be a pattern of lack of transparency, consultation, dialogue, fair negotiation, and participation of the affected communities in processes concerning evictions undertaken or planned in connection with the World Cup and Olympics.” The World Cup is providing a pretext for massive displacement and demolition of shantytowns.
Rafael Lima, who represented his favela Bairro da Paz in Salvador at a community meeting about pending development plans for the World Cup:
“We are not interested in waving Brazilian flags or volunteering for the World Cup… We need jobs. We need education. We need land titles. We need health care. And we need to know where this road they are planning to build is going, and who will be affected.”
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Last September, the AP reported that after the construction company OAS forced the workers to pay $250 each for the privilege of getting hired for a construction project at the international airport in São Paolo, according to labor officials, "many had to sleep on thin mattresses spread out on the floor and lacked for water, refrigerators and stoves. … While the workers apparently were not held against their will, they were forced to live in conditions so miserable that the Labor Ministry defines them as 'slave-like.'" For their trouble, they were reportedly offered $3,000 in compensation by the company before being sent home. Much like overseas migrant laborers (as in Qatar’s massive scandals in its preparation for the 2022 World Cup ), Brazil’s internal labor trafficking networks use recruiters to lure poor rural workers to faraway worksites, where they are extremely vulnerable to exploitation or coercion.
Many Brazilians have been directly uprooted by the projects through forced evictions. In 2011 United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing Raquel Rolnik sharply criticized “what seems to be a pattern of lack of transparency, consultation, dialogue, fair negotiation, and participation of the affected communities in processes concerning evictions undertaken or planned in connection with the World Cup and Olympics.” The World Cup is providing a pretext for massive displacement and demolition of shantytowns.
Rafael Lima, who represented his favela Bairro da Paz in Salvador at a community meeting about pending development plans for the World Cup:
“We are not interested in waving Brazilian flags or volunteering for the World Cup… We need jobs. We need education. We need land titles. We need health care. And we need to know where this road they are planning to build is going, and who will be affected.”
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