The Secret World of Modern Slavery

Slave-Free Camp

Zen says pig iron producers buy charcoal from illegal camps because it would take at least a decade to grow trees and provide enough wood to make the charcoal to meet their needs. He says his company uses no slave labor to make its charcoal; it relies on its own employees and its own eucalyptus forest, which covers an area the size of New York City.

Ferro Gusa Carajas is a joint venture owned by Nucor and Cia. Vale do Rio Doce, or CVRD, the world's largest producer of iron ore. A tour of the company's forests, about 124 miles east of Maraba, shows markedly different conditions from those at Transcameta.

In one clearing, about 100 kilns are lined up. Workers wear beige work uniforms, hard hats and company-issued steel-toed boots. Fire extinguishers are close at hand, and there's a first-aid station, a cafeteria and a shower house for workers.

The plant in Maraba is the only iron smelter in the Carajas region that gets all of its charcoal from legal suppliers, Zen says.

`The Truth'

``The truth is that if the government today insisted that the industry here use only 100 percent certifiably legal charcoal, the whole industry, with the exception of our plant, would have to shut down,'' he says.

Cosipar says it has a program to grow its own trees for making charcoal. By 2014, the company will have planted enough trees to supply all of its charcoal needs, Monteiro says. The company is also starting to use coking coal, which will help reduce its charcoal consumption by 37 percent by 2009, he says.

On Aug. 13, 2004, 14 pig iron producers in Brazil, including Cosipar, signed a pact called a ``commitment to end slave labor.'' The industry promised the government it would work to identify suppliers using slaves. ``Degrading work and slave labor are serious human violations,'' the pledge said.

The pig iron companies set up an association to ``assure dignity for workers in the pig iron production chain.'' The group hired auditors to inspect charcoal camps for slavery. Since then, the group has decertified 125 charcoal suppliers for failing such inspections, according to its Web site.

New Bathrooms

In February and June, months before Brazil's Special Mobile Enforcement Group raided Transcameta and concluded the camp used slave labor, the trade group's auditors inspected the same site. The trade group allowed the camp to remain open and supply Cosipar, and it requested new bathrooms and sleeping quarters, Monteiro says.

The government task force has determined that some pig iron companies aren't abiding by the pact. In the past two years, inspectors have raided at least seven charcoal camps that supply pig iron exporters and removed workers they determined to be slaves, Campos says.

On March 9, inspectors raided a camp in Dom Eliseu in the southeastern Amazon and discovered 13 workers in conditions ``analogous to slavery,'' a government report says. The camp, Fazenda Turmalina, was selling all of its production to Siderurgica do Maranhao SA, or Simasa, according to statements taken from a company representative.

April Raid

Recife-based Simasa, which is owned by industrial group Queiroz Galvao SA, counts Nucor as a ``main customer'' through its brokers, spokesman Paulo Afonso wrote in an e-mail response to questions.

On April 1, inspectors raided Carvoaria do Gute, another charcoal camp in Dom Eliseu that supplies Simasa. The camp, which had been decertified by the industry's own anti-slavery group, was still open and inspectors ``rescued'' 18 workers there, government documents show.

Campos says a rescue of workers takes place when inspectors have determined the people were slaves who had to be paid.

Simasa spokesman Luis Gomes says the company condemns the use of slave labor and has stopped buying from charcoal camps accused of illegal activities.

On May 18, inspectors raided Carvoaria do Mineiro, a charcoal camp in Sao Geraldo do Araguaia that was supplying Usina Siderurgica de Maraba SA, known as Usimar, according to a government report.

Never Paid

The men had been recruited from a town about 100 miles away and had never been paid, aside from small advances for food, inspectors found. The officials identified three children at the camp. The inspectors rescued 22 people.

Usimar agreed to pay a total of $46,339 of back wages and damages to the laborers, the report says. Usimar officials didn't respond to requests for comment.

The challenge that major companies face in vouching for the integrity of supply chains that stretch back to camps in the Amazon can be seen in the case of Cosipar.

The charcoal from Transcameta is loaded into trucks and taken to Cosipar's pig iron plant in an industrial district in Maraba, 1,300 miles north of Rio de Janeiro.

During a Sept. 20 visit to the Maraba plant, 60 trucks loaded with charcoal are lined up outside the factory. Charcoal and iron ore move on a conveyor belt to the top of a six-story, rust-colored blast furnace, which is tended by workers in hard hats and protective suits.

Roaring Furnace

A stream of water bathes the roaring furnace to keep it from overheating. The pig iron cools into 11-pound ingots about the size of soft-drink cans, which are taken by truck to the port of Barcarena, near Belem on the Atlantic coast.

Some of the pig iron is put on rail cars and transported to the port of Sao Luis. At the port, the pig iron is loaded onto ships.

Most of the 330,000 tons of pig iron Cosipar expects to produce this year will be shipped to the U.S., mainly via New Orleans, Monteiro says. National Material Trading has been Cosipar's broker in the U.S. for nine years.

One buyer of National Material Trading's Brazilian pig iron has been Ford's casting plant near Cleveland, which mixes pig iron with scrap metal to make engine parts.

The plant builds engine blocks for F-150 pickups, Focus sedans and Explorer and Expedition SUVs. Ford halted purchases from National Material Trading on Oct. 5. The company will make sure none of its suppliers buys materials made by slaves and will change suppliers if necessary, Ford's Brown says.

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