The MPT stated that workers were determined to reside in cramped hotels with “minimal comfort and hygiene conditions” at the end of last year, when the government stopped constructing the plant. According to a declaration, 31 personnel shared one bathroom, and a few people slept on beds without mattresses.
The MPT additionally alleged that the website’s staff had their passports confiscated and were working under “employment contracts with unlawful clauses, harsh working hours, and no weekly rest.”
Prosecutors said the employees had up to 70% of their salaries withheld and faced high prices to terminate their contracts.
According to Brazilian regulation, “slavery-like conditions” consist of debt bondage and degrading hard work. The manufacturing unit was being built inside the town of Camacari in the northeast of Brazil.
It was meant to be BYD’s first EV plant outside of Asia and was expected to be operational with the aid of March 2025. One of the biggest producers of electrical motors in the world is BYD, or Build Your Dreams. According to Jato Dynamics, a research company in the vehicle industry, it outsold Elon Musk’s Tesla in Europe for the first time in April. The organization has been seeking to boost its presence in Brazil, which is its biggest remote places market.
In 2015, it opened a manufacturing unit in São Paulo to make electric bus chassis.
- International Business
- Electric cars
- Brazil
- Car industry