Two cases of “slave labour” in Brazil- Theoretical perspective of Collective bargain and Fair trade.

Abstract

As introduced by the title, this thesis examines two cases of reduction into slavery condition for workers in Brazil; the first one concerning the textile industry, more particularly Zara of the Inditex group and the second one inspects the conditions in two coffee farms in Minas Gerais supplying noted brands such as Starbucks. Furthermore, this thesis begins with an introduction of the sustainability theme, which has as a main aim to better conditions for all human beings and according with the cases, there have been taken into consideration two theoretical concepts, precisely the collective bargain and the fair trade. The question in common of these events is if the headquarter is responsible for all the infraction happened in their productive process since it is not something new to hear workers exploited by multinationals especially in developing countries, due to a wider lack of a working legislation and as a consequence of the transnational dimension where the multinational operates, which correspond to an overlapping of the local legislation and the one of the headquarter. For this reason, there are international and European tools such as the Transnational Framework Agreements in addition to organizations such as the OECD and the United Nations trying to improve the employees’ rights and the regulation of working contracts. Regarding the exploitation case in coffee plantations, it is introduced the topic of the fair trade together with the main coffee labels and the one used by Starbucks. Despite the objections by multinationals, experts and the juridical system holds to be true that it is a responsibility of the headquarter to make sure that also suppliers respect their Code of Conduct, which ban the reduction into slavery between other indications and the fact of being unaware of these conditions is just due to a “convenient blindness”.