On 16 October the Labor Ministry issued a decree (Portaria N° 1129/2017) that altered the way slave labor is defined and prosecuted in Brazil. Under the new rules, it is no longer enough for workers to be laboring for many hours in degrading and inhumane conditions or to be paid only in food. From now on, for workers to be considered to be working “in conditions analogous to slavery,” employers must deny them the freedom to come and go...

Temer’s easing of slavery laws is extremely galling for many Brazilians, particularly as the problem is still very serious. According to figure published by the Walk Free Foundation, Brazil currently has about 155,000 people working in conditions analogous to slavery. In March, Mongabay and Repórter Brasil reported on how U.S. based companies, such as Walmart and Lowes, bought timber from Brazilian traders that sourced forest products from Amazon sawmills where loggers worked under slave labor conditions...

[E]xperts called for the immediate revocation of Temer’s decree, noting that it was “directly violating” international conventions of which Brazil is a signatory.