II. THE GOVERNMENT ACTIONS

 

II.6 Protecting the Workers

One of the most important objectives of the Federal Government's actions in the labor area is, by means of intense supervision, to eliminate forced labor, to repress child labor, to guarantee the observation of safety and health rules and to look after the workers' patrimony, represented by the FGTS, avoiding its dodging. Besides that, to observe the precepts of the labor law and of the agreements and conventions celebrated between employees and employers.

In this sense, actions are being developed to increase the efficiency and efficacy levels of labor inspection across the country, with utilization of the information and informatics compatible with the enterprises' level of modernization. And the institutional partnerships are being enlarged for the formulation of public policy in the field of labor inspection, particularly in the fight against forced labor, child labor and FGTS dodging.

The combat actions against forced and degrading labor, accomplished in 1995/1996, benefited around 108,640 workers, of which 338 were liberated from slave conditions. This result was possible due to the creation of the Special Group of Mobile Supervision (Directive no. 549, as of July 14, 1995), that destined an exclusive and trained board of labor inspection agents to act on all the national territory. This Special Group is broadening the coverage of its operations, starting from complaints received by the Ministry of Labor and from the establishment of an action that is preventive, and orients and creates awareness among employers. The Special Group will give priority to the northern and mid-western regions, particularly to activities that involve deforestation for creating or increasing pastures.

Aiming equally at the workers' protection, an Executive Group for Repressing Forced Labor (Grupo Executivo de Repressão ao Trabalho Forçado — Gertraf) — Decree no. 1,538, as of June 27, 1995 — was created, of interministerial nature and under the Ministry of Labor's coordenation. The Gertraf's mission is to conceive and execute measures for increasing the efficiency and efficacy of the Governmental actions in the prevention and fight against slave labor and other forms of degrading work.

As for child labor, the objective is to use the Group of Mobile Supervision and the State Comissions, created in the ambit of the Ministry of Labor, based on the Preliminary Diagnosis of Child and Juvenile Labor Spots in Brazil, elaborated in 1996, to fight prioritarily the most intolerable forms of child labor. At the same time, it shall give continuity to the process of integration and articulation with society's organized entities and with the state and municipal governments, in search of solutions related to removing children from work and assuring their permanence at school. Children who develop activities related to sugar-cane agriculture (AL), salt extraction (CE) and textile weaving (RN and PB) will be beneficiaries.

As to women's labor, besides Brazil's ratification of various International Labor Organization (ILO) conventions relative to the subject and the necessity of guaranteeing specific labor rights, the Federal Government created a group of actions designed to protect feminine labor. In the Ministry of Labor's ambit can be pointed out:

1) inspections oriented towards the legal precepts, the generation of monthly statistics with the number of inspected enterprises and the number of women affected by the inspection actions;

2) constitution of intersecretarial groups for the implementation of ILO Convention no. 111, about discrimination at work and during occupation, as the first important result of the Governmental Seminar for Multipliers in Gender and Race issues, that took place in May 1996, at the ILO office in Brasília;

3) institution of the Permanent Women's Labor Group (Grupo Permanente do Trabalho da Mulher — GPTM), with the objective of systematizing and elaborating policies, starting from those of the Ministry of Labor relative to women's participation in the labor market.

GRÁFICO 10 ENTERPRISES INSPECTED BY A LABOR INSPECTOR Annual Average Source: Sefit/Mtb

Graph 10 presents the performance of labor inspection in the 1990-1996 period, showing the average evolution of enterprises per labor inspector.

In 1996, the enterprises that were inspected totalled 485,045, for an average contingent of 1,673 labor inspectors per month in the end activity. This caused the increase in the average of inspected enterprises to 273.74 per inspector per year, wich represented growth in labor inspection coverage in relation to previous years. Most of this growth was due to the accomplishment of the second National Campaign of Register of Employees and Compensation Fund Inspection, wich lasted from April to December, 1996.

Keeping pace with the improving indicator of inspected enterprises, FGTS exaction in 1996 maintained its growth trend, rising by 16.29% in comparison to the previous year, for an amount of R$ 11.671 billion (average of R$ 972.58 million per month), quite close to the first projection of R$ 814.00 million per month. Graph 11 shows the evolution of FGTS exaction.

GRÁFICO 11 FGTS EXACTION GROWTH

In relation to the issues of health and safety at work, the Federal Government created the Improvement of Work Place Conditions Program. The goals of the Program are:

• establishing, in partnership with employees and employers, a group of actions to better the health and safety conditions in the work places;
• implementing actions to prevent occupational accidents and diseases;
• revising and adopting rules that regulate health and safety at work; and
• adopting procedures concerning the inspection of work conditions.

These actions intend to promote citizenship at the working place. The Federal Government's intention is to broaden the negotiations about workers' safety and health, seeking understanding with employee and employer representatives. In this sense, various pacts and collective labor agreements have already been signed containing health and safety clauses, among them the agreements on benzene, plastic injectors and collective transport in São Paulo.