This Tuesday, Jair Bolsonaro’s government tried to suppress and justify the complaint of Brazilian workers’ representatives at a meeting of the ILO (International Labor Organization) in Geneva. In the last three years, agendas such as the elimination of social policies, deaths due to the pandemic, attacks on democracy and the rule of law were included in the speech. For the government, the pandemic cannot be used for “political interests” and it would not be the appropriate place to address such issues.
Labor response took place at the ILO Standards Commission when Juneia Batista, Secretary for Working Women at CUT Brasil, accused the government of managing the pandemic. The government demanded the right of reply, but was not in the room at the time of the speech. Hours later he took the floor and took the floor to criticize the workers for using the committee’s stage to solve the problem, insisting that the country’s recovery was one of the highest in the world.
Juneia started her speech by reminding that the first death from Covid-19 in Brazil was Cleonice Gonçalves, a domestic worker who had contracted the virus from her employer, returning from a trip to Europe.
“In Brazil, the average income of workers fell 8% during the pandemic. In recent years, the Brazilian currency has lost more than 30% of its purchasing power. The cost of packaging basic foods has increased even more: in São Paulo, the increase was almost 50%,” he said. “The price of cooking gas, another essential item, is the highest price of the century and is almost 10% of the minimum wage, which is now around $220,” he said.
According to him, Brazil is “a rare country with high inflation, interest and unemployment rates”. “Unemployment is over 11%. Informal work is at record levels, reaching almost 50% of the employed population,” he said.
The worker representative also pointed out that IBGE data shows that the national average salary of domestic workers has fallen from 924 reals to 876 reals, below the minimum wage, below $200. “It’s important to note that informal domestic workers earn about 40% less than formal workers, and black domestic workers earn up to 15% less on average,” he said.
“In addition to the economic disaster, the political project of the current Brazilian president is the destruction of all social and labor rights conquered by the struggles of the Brazilian working class,” he said. In his complaint, he highlighted how Bolsonaro’s government promoted “social security reform against the right to a good pension”, cuts in education and health spending, in addition to setbacks in the fight against privatizations, child and slave labor. attacks on movements and unions and support of anti-union practices.
The representative also highlighted “the denial that has resulted in more than 666,000 deaths so far during the pandemic”, in addition to the loosening of environmental legislation, attempts to promote the use of weapons, police brutality and systematic attacks on democracy, human rights and the Democratic state.
When the Brazilian delegation spoke, the government criticized that this was not the place to discuss the issues raised by the workers’ representative and that there was no individual complaint against Brazil in the ILO Committee on Standards.
According to the Brazilian delegation, participants should only engage in “technical discussions” and not have political discussions. According to the government, the meeting’s agenda was limited to topics such as the progress and challenges of the issues under review, measures to promote ILO conventions, and pathways to future ILO standards and technical assistance.
According to the government, Brazil will recover “faster” than other economies after the pandemic. Representatives also criticized that the pandemic was being used for “political interests” and that the measures taken by the government had saved “millions of jobs”.
source: Noticias
