End of meal vouchers and paid commuting hours, lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), illegal searches, and pregnant women fired: working conditions among seasonal harvest employees at Cutrale – one of the world’s leading orange producers – get worse with each harvest, according to workers from the company’s farms heard by Repórter Brasil.
In 2020, Cutrale suspended meal vouchers, which provided a R$ 240.00 increase in orange pickers’ earnings. In addition, temporary employees hired to work from May to February are no longer paid for the time they spend traveling to and from the farms. Brazil’s 2017 labour reform cancelled what used to be a mandatory benefit.
Daniel,* 52 years old, has been working for three years at Cutrale’s farms in the Araraquara, SP, area. In this year’s harvest, he reports having been paid R$ 1,300.00 reais a month on average – just R$ 200.00 above the national minimum wage. The previous harvest, however, was even worse for workers interviewed by Repórter Brasil.
Thirty-year-old Maria* reports having worked at Cutrale for nine months between 2019 and 2020. In addition to monthly wages, she was paid around R$ 150.00 at the end of her employment contract. At the time, Cutrale had changed its method for hiring seasonal workers, who now have temporary employment contracts that do not include benefits such as unemployment insurance.
With the change in the company’s hiring policy, without meal vouchers and paid commuting time, Maria’s monthly...
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