Marinho defends revision of labor outsourcing rules

The Minister of Labor and Employment, Luiz Marinho, is visiting today (20), in the municipality of Bento Gonçalves, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the place where 207 workers were rescued, last month, in working conditions analogous to slavery. During the morning, he met with the mayor of the city, Diogo Siqueira. After the meeting, when asked about the current labor standards, Marinho defended a review of the rules, and said that he will create a tripartite group – with representatives of companies, employees and government – for “possible immediate revisions to the legislation”. The minister cited as an example of a norm to be revised the outsourcing rules, which would have become too comprehensive, resulting in “confusions” and, ultimately, in flagrant labor analogous to slavery, as seen recently in Rio Grande do Sul and in other places. “The outsourcing project was quite broad, it seems to me that it ended up creating confusion even in the act of hiring, what can and what cannot. It ended up reaching the logical absurdity of having a production link practicing work analogous to slavery,” said Marinho. He added that the recent increase in cases of flagrant labor in situations similar to slavery leads to “the realization that this is a result of the precariousness of the labor legislation implemented in the previous government”. Marinho’s agenda this Monday includes a meeting with grape and wine producers in the region, including the three wineries where the workers were rescued. The minister added that he will ask companies “to take responsibility for what happened”. In Marinho’s assessment, the companies involved – the Garibaldi, Salton and Aurora wineries – are responsible for what happened, from a legal point of view, only because they hired the outsourced company that provided the labor, even if it had no knowledge of the degrading situations . “If the wineries hired them, they are automatically responsible, it is the responsibility of the entire production chain”, said the minister. He also added that he intends to hold a contest to recompose the staff of labor inspectors.

Agência Brasil