About two months after a story by Agência Pública revealed alleged violations against workers at the company BYD’s factory in Bahia, northeastern Brazil, new allegations have emerged. The Chinese company is a global leader in the production of electric cars.
According to information obtained by Pública’s reporters, after the piece was published in November 2024, the company installed cameras in the administration and the construction areas and put up posters prohibiting photographs in these spaces.
According to the story, a computer program that creates a digital watermark with each employee’s name was also installed to identify from which machine information was shared externally.
BYD sent an email on December 18, 2024, informing employees of the changes.
In the message, the company explained that the installation was implemented by the ”Department of Information Technology of China,” and that ”this watermark registers the name of the user logged into the device, device name, and the current date,” adding that ”this measure aims to prevent possible information leaks.”
Assaults, exhausting work routines, and hazardous conditions
All these changes began to be implemented shortly after Pública revealed, exclusively, the complaint it received that workers brought from China were being subjected to poor working conditions and living in dirty, crowded, and poorly lit accommodations.
According to information gathered by the news agency, Brazilian workers were not affected. The Brazilians explained that Chinese workers have great difficulty filing any complaints since they do not understand Portuguese, just as the Brazilians cannot speak in Mandarin, Cantonese, or any other languages spoken by the Chinese workers.
Based on personal accounts, images, and videos, the story published by Pública showed that many employees were working without personal protective equipment, subjected to shifts of 12 hours per day, and suffering physical violence if they did not follow orders or meet deadlines.
Last December 23, a month after the complaint, a task force including the Public Prosecutor’s Office for Labour (MPT) and the Ministry of Labor and Employment rescued 163 Chinese workers hired by the company Jinjiang Group, one of the three outsourced Chinese companies that BYD partnered with to set up the factory in the industrial hub of Camaçari city, Bahia state.
In addition to the poor working conditions, the task force identified that workers were being subjected to slavery-like conditions, having their passports and part of their salary retained by Jinjiang. About 60 percent of their income was confiscated, and the rest was paid in Chinese currency to prevent them from leaving the job.
According to Ana Paula Studart, a lawyer specializing in labour law, companies must adhere to occupational health and safety standards to protect their employees. ‘This includes implementing accident prevention programs, [providing] personal protective equipment, conducting periodic training, and occupational health examinations. All this is essential for foreign companies to adapt to the labour regulations in place,” she said.
The earth-levelling sector (preparing the ground for construction), for which Jinjiang was responsible, was suspended by MPT’s auditors. The case led the Brazilian government to suspend the issuance of temporary work visas to BYD at the end of December.
What the companies say
BYD explained, by way of a note, that it “does not tolerate disrespect for Brazilian law and human dignity” and, given this, has “decided to immediately terminate the contract with Jinjiang.” The company also revealed that the 163 rescued workers were taken back home and received the amounts they were owed based on their contracts.
When asked to explain the installation of 135 cameras and the program that identifies users’ profiles, the company said that “measures relating to the protection of industry secrets are common and essential practices in cutting-edge industries, especially for leading companies in technological innovation.”
The company also said that these actions ”reflect the responsibility to protect strategic assets and are adopted consistently, respectfully, and in accordance with the law”, given that it applies for, on average, ”45 patents per working day.”
In the note, BYD did not explain why it only began to adopt such ”industrial protection measures” shortly after the complaints about mistreatment of Chinese workers, given that the company began operating in Bahia in March 2024.
‘Witch hunt’
BYD’s measures to monitor employees in an attempt to prevent further leaks of possible wrongdoing stands in direct contrast to the company’s public messaging since the allegations of labour comparable to slavery were made public.
People spoke of a “witch hunt” climate to try to find and punish those allegedly responsible despite lacking proof that the material in the first report actually came from BYD employees.
A São Paulo law firm, Urbano e Vitalino Advogados, was assigned to provide support during the controversy. In a statement, BYD said it had previously used this firm’s services, and it had been ”working on issues related to the companies hired to carry out the works in Camaçari.”
In December, with the help of Chinese translators, BYD’s president in Brazil, Tyler Li, spoke with Brazilian employees and underlined the importance of the venture.
He reportedly guaranteed that Brazilian employees who were working in the administrative section of Jinjiang — and did not suffer mistreatment or violence — would not lose their jobs following the end of the contract with the Chinese company. Some of the employees, however, were already reportedly given notice of termination by January.
In a statement, BYD said that Jinjiang’s Brazilian employees will be considered in a selection process and those who meet the requirements of the available positions “will be integrated into the team”.
BYD said it is committed to its operations in Brazil and the city of Camaçari — and intends to turn the site into the “Silicon Valley of South America.”
Pro-BYD lobby
In the week that Pública revealed the complaint about the mistreatment of workers, the governor of Bahia, Jerônimo Rodrigues of the Workers’ Party (PT) — the same as president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — took part in an event at the BYD construction plant. The event was already scheduled before the story’s publication.
Asked by journalists about the case, the governor said he trusts BYD, citing his party’s history in defending workers.
Camaçari’s mayor, Luiz Caetano, also from PT, came out in defense of the company, suggesting that there are competing interests looking to tarnish BYD’s image.
Governor Jerônimo and President Lula have viewed the construction of the BYD factory in the state as part of a strategy of rapprochement with China. The federal government even has a contract with the company to use two of their models as official cars. It strengthens the company in the national market and confronts Tesla, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, the main competitor in Brazil’s electric car market.
The site where the Chinese company is building its factory in Camaçari was owned by Ford for almost 20 years. The American company decided to end its car production in Brazil in 2021. Bahia’s government then bought the site and resold it to BYD for R$ 287.8 million (about 49.8 million US dollars) to incentivize the construction of the first electric car factory in the country.
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