German car manufacturer Mercedes-Benz was sentenced by the Brazilian justice system to pay a fine equivalent to 7.3 million dollars for “acts of harassment and discrimination against its workers” in one of its facilities, a court announced this Friday.
“Workers who suffered injuries as a result of their work were isolated inside the factory in Campinas (Sao Paulo state) and “exposed to humiliating and humiliating situations. Also (…) racial discrimination,” according to a statement from Regional Labor Court number 15.
The court sentenced the manufacturer to pay 40 million reais (7.3 million dollars) for collective moral damages, in a ruling that can still be appealed.
Documents from the process relate how, between 2004 and 2019, several workers at the Mercedes-Benz factory in Campinas were mistreated and discriminated against after contracting “occupational diseases.”
Upon their return to the factory, the employees were “victims of isolationeven physically, deprived of promotion opportunities and salary increases by being designated as a ‘Group of Divergents.'”
Some were even victims of racist insults such as “monkey”, the labor court reports.
“Accepting these practices as ‘isolated events’, as presented by the company, would imply a serious social setback,” says the judge in the case, Luís Henrique Rafael, cited in the statement.
Mercedes-Benz He did not immediately respond to an AFP query about the sentence.
In one of the testimonies cited in the process, a worker who could not carry pieces weighing more than five kilos due to an illness reported having been called a “monkey son of a bitch” by a collaborator of his boss.
The affected person filed a complaint with his supervisor, but received a three-day suspension.
Another of the plaintiffs, represented by the Metallurgical Workers Union of Campinas, assured that after returning to the factory he was assigned tasks such as serving coffee and washing the car of a manager, who on one occasion made fun of him for his black skin.
Some of this behavior continued to occur even during the justice investigation, according to the case documents.
If the mistreatment persists, the company will have to pay daily fines of up to 100,000 reais ($18,000) for each affected worker.
The Campinas Parts Distribution and Logistics Center is Mercedes-Benz’s largest outside Germany, according to the manufacturer’s website.
