Brazil fires head of labour inspection after BYD slave-labour blacklist; ministers accused of interference

Luiz Felipe Brandao de Mello, who led the National Secretariat of Labour Inspection since 2023, was dismissed. The decision was published in the official gazette on Monday. He oversaw the unit responsible for enforcing labour standards nationwide, including the fight against slave-like working conditions.

BYD, the Chinese electric vehicle maker, was added to a registry of employers found to have subjected workers to conditions analogous to slavery.

Anafitra, the National Association of Labour Inspectors, said the firing amounted to institutional retaliation and linked it directly to BYD’s inclusion on the blacklist.

“The dismissal of an official for enforcing the law is an extremely grave act. It weakens the autonomy of labour inspection and endangers a public policy built over decades,” Rodrigo Carvalho, a labour inspector and member of Anafitra’s national executive committee, said in a statement sent to the press.

Anafitra added that the episode was part of a “pattern of interference by Labour Minister Luiz Marinho in completed administrative proceedings.”

Anafitra accused Marinho of using his ministerial post to shield large companies from the consequences of slave labour findings and said they filed a case at the Brazilian Supreme Court seeking to declare unconstitutional the provision in the labour code that allows for the minister to take over completed enforcement proceedings.