Submitted 1 week ago by BrikoX@lemmy.zip to globalnews@lemmy.zip
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8xj9jp57r2o
More than 160 workers have been rescued, according to local prosecutors.
Archived version: web.archive.org/web/…/c8xj9jp57r2o
SpinScore: spinscore.io/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fnew…
I'm from Brazil. It's impressive how fast BYD cars have been multiplying in my city.
I mean, it’s because they are cheap and decent. But I guess it’s impressive since other car makers have failed to do the same thing.
Just to make things more clear for people, this is about subcontractors, employed by what looks to be a local building company that is making a new factory for BYD EVs.
I think the article’s title really makes it look like BYD is the one withholding passports and wages, but actually they are not and inside the article they say BYD has already asked the subcontractor to improve working conditions before it became news, but they didn’t comply.
The article doesn’t specify how much BYD’s executives knew or if they had the ability to change things by their own choise.
I think it’s BYD’s responsibility to know such things. This feels like the argument Hershey’s made when they got caught using slave labor to source their cacao.
Yeah, absolutely. They can’t simply shift all responsibility to someone else.
had their passports and salaries withheld by a building company
Usually “conditions similar to slavery” in Brazil doesn’t imply the people can’t quit their jobs. This is fucking “literal”, not “similar”.
Also, WTF, importing cheap workers to a job in Brazil is close to absurd. They aren’t allowed to pay less than they would pay a local.
zante@slrpnk.net 1 week ago
Just the bbc doing BBC things
lnxtx@feddit.nl 1 week ago
Yeah, bailing local car companies was OK.
syklemil@discuss.tchncs.de 1 week ago
No, there really is talk of tariffs several places to neutralise the price advantage that the Chinese subsidies result in. The Chinese want to promote their domestic auto industries, but so does any other country with an auto industry.
TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
Right but it reads very “omg communism Bad cuz it leads to… affordable electric vehicles… please ignore every other country that produces cars also having subsidies.” The US changed its subsidies to only US built EVs and then complains that the Chinese government is making EVs affordable.
logi@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Congratulations, you found the second and third last paragraphs of the article where they tack on a slightly wider view in case you’ve missed it. It’s far from being the meat of the story.