“John” was just 16 years old and was allegedly recruited to work on a Brazilian coffee farm that provides Starbucks, a global cafe chain.
Shortly after his birthday, he embarked on a 16-hour bus trip to Minas Gerais Farm – just finding nothing he promised could do.
Unpaid and without protective equipment such as boots and gloves, he worked in the hot sun from 5.30am to 6pm with only 20 minutes of lunch break until he was rescued in a raid by Brazilian authorities in June 2024.
The official report of the operation concluded that John suffered “child labour in dangerous conditions” and that he and other workers were “trafficked and subjected to slavery.”
This week, John and seven other Brazilian workers (determined as John Doy 1-8 for fear of revenge) filed civil lawsuits against Starbucks in the United States and, with the support of the International Rights Advocate (IRA), sought financial compensation for the damage they allegedly claimed.
On Thursday, the IRA and the NGO Coffee Watch also filed a complaint with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in an attempt to “exclude Starbucks and other major companies such as NESTLUR, Jacobs Douwe Egberts, Dounkin, Illy ally and McDonalds.
The complaint cites examples of various actions by Brazilian authorities that have rescued workers in recent years, noting that the case is “just the tip of the iceberg – examples of working conditions that are widely exploited by Brazilian coffee plantations are very common”.
“If we can convince CBP, our case is watertight… it would be a gamechanger because Brazilian authorities have found thousands of people under these conditions, and clearly what has been done so far has not solved the problem,” said Etelle Higonnet, founder and director of Coffee Watch.
In Brazil, coffee farming is the economic sector, with the largest number of workers rescued from conditions similar to slavery, a legal category that includes a combination of factors such as debt bondage, excessive working hours, degraded accommodation and food, and lack of payments.
The country has been the world’s leading coffee producer since the 19th century, when it soared due to forced labor by hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans and African Brazilians.
Today, African-Brazilians constitute the majority of workers rescued from slave-like conditions (66%).
“The logic behind coffee production here is one of the erratic labors that have been imposing blacks on blacks throughout our history,” said Jorge Ferreira Dos Santos Filho, coordinator of the workers’ organization Adere, which assists authorities in identifying victims in this situation.
“In rural areas, we ended up in these situations as blacks because we had no choice but to put food on the table,” Santos Filho said.
All eight workers who filed lawsuits against Starbucks live in Quilombos, a Bantu-the original word, referring to settlements established by escaped enslaved people, and are now also used in rural and urban black communities in Brazil.
In Brazil’s Quilombos, about 1.3 million people live in key areas such as hygiene and illiteracy.
“The Starbucks charges for a cup of coffee are $6, most of which are harvested by forced laborers and child labor, which really goes beyond criminal conduct. It’s morally frustrating,” said Terrence Collingsworth, executive director of the IRA.
Related: “Only by killing one of us can he calm down”: victims of slavery on a Brazilian farm
Both lawsuits and complaints claim that despite the rescue operation, farm owners were fined and could be added to the government’s “dirty list” of employers who maintain employers with forced labor, Starbucks and other companies continue to import coffee from those farms.
A Starbucks spokesman said: “The cornerstone of our approach to buying coffee is the Coffee and Farmer’s Rights (CAFE) practice, one of the coffee industries that was launched in 2004 and are constantly improving.
“Developed in partnership with the International Reserve, CAFE Practice is a validation program designed to measure farms to resist economic, social and environmental standards, aimed at promoting transparent, profitable and sustainable coffee cultivation practices while also protecting the well-being of coffee farmers, workers, families and communities.”
In Brazil, forcing workers to engage in forced labor is a crime that can be sentenced to up to eight years in prison, but farmers are rarely sentenced to jail.
“To end this, we need consumers to realize that every cup of coffee they drink without questioning its true origin is to fund slave labor in coffee production,” said Santos Filho. “If you continue to drink coffee without questioning its origin, zero tolerance for workers or the practice is useless.”
