Case study on the judicial decision which prohibited the compensation based on produtivity in the sugar cane industry of the state os São Paulo countryside

• Autor(a) principal: de Castro, Janaína Vieira
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Outros Autores: Pasqualeto, Olívia de Quintana Figueiredo
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista de Estudos Empíricos em Direito
• Texto Completo: https://reedrevista.org/reed/article/view/204

Despite the advanced stage of mechanization in the sugar cane industry, human workforce is still used inrural farming. Usually, workers are paid based on production according to the amount of sugar cane thatthey are able to cut. This method of payment incentivizes the increase of working hours and the rhythm of work as the greater the amount of sugar cane cut, the greater the payment the cutter receives, which results in an inhuman effort performed by the cane sugar cutters in pursuit of better compensation. This excessive work has caused many accidents, illness and even deaths among workers. Considering this, the Prosecution Office for the Ministry of Labor filed a class action against Usina Santa Fé S.A., requesting that the Usina Santa Fé S.A. be prohibited to compensate its workers based on production. The class action in question was ruled in favor of sugar cane cutters by the applicable court. This judicial decision represents the first case in which a sugar cane plant was ordered to cease compensating its workers based on their production, which demonstrates not only a possibility of extinguishing this ruthless method, but also it is groundbreaking for other class actions. Thus, this decision is pioneering, and due to this fact, it will be the basis of this case study that aims to analyze the implications arising from this judicial decision. In order to do so, we take into consideration the specialized doctrine and we examined the judicial records and conducted interviews with both the prosecutor and the judge in the mentioned case.