On February 17, 2004, Labor Inspector Fernanda Giannasi arrived in Criminal Court to stand trial. On 16 December, she was intimated that she has to present herself in the court the next day for offending the honour of Almir Pazzianotto Pinto, a former Brazilian Labour Minister. Pinto has brought criminal complaint under Article 139 of the Penal Code. These are laws from the years of military dictatorship, which provides for criminal prosecution of critics of government officials.
Meanwhile the case could not proceed because the presiding Federal Judge, Joao Carlos Da Rocha Mattos, had been jailed on corruption charges, as a result of Operation Anaconda, one of Brazil’s biggest organized crime scandals. The judge has been arrested in government investigation of organised crime and has been charged with taking bribes to protect criminals. It is not a coincidence that Gianassi’s case went before this judge. Gianassi has declined to plea bargain to resolve the matter and avoid the risk of being jailed and losing the job.
The temporary judge announced that she did not feel inclined to replace Mattos and that no further hearings would be held until September. No official explanation was given for the protracted and open-ended delay. One person, Labour Inspector Fernanda Giannasi, was not overly surprised.
Powerful corporate interests control Brazilian justice. The fact that the Judge selected to adjudicate this case has been accused of gross corruption and links with organized crime is further evidence, if it were needed, of the lengths to which some sections of the Brazilian establishment will go to protect negligent corporations.
Pinto was the minister from 1985-1988 as part of the first civil government after the military dictatorship. This was prior to the change in the constitution, which deprived the Labour Minister to create Trade Unions. He was and continues to be a lawyer for big companies and state companies. He was a lawyer in the present Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s Union. Lula and Pinto were adversaries at one time. Now since the right wing party to which Pinto belongs is supporting Lula they seem to be in pact.
While Lula was in India in January 2004, he said, “Let us engage in globalisation which is attentive to social and environmental concerns which is fairer both politically and economically. Lula government ought to take note of two major players EU, US and more than 20 countries have been forced to eliminate asbestos of all forms. It would be appropriate and befitting Lula’s stature to abide by his own words and ensure that Gianassi who is working for the social and environmental concerns is not victimised.
In 1985, Saint Gobain company’s trade union illegally replaced an independent union, which had organized a strike at the company’s biggest factory. Now Gianassi is charged with insulting an ex-Labor Minister who supported a trade union founded by asbestos multinational Saint Gobain. She has been charged because she had denounced the creation of the false Union controlled by the French multinational Saint-Gobain (includes Eternit). This is disturbing her discussion to settle compensation for 2,500 victims which has been going on for three years and termed the company’s offer as derisory and insulting. This company is gradually converting its former cement plants to make fiber cement building products using PVC fibers instead of asbestos. It seems the executive management in France is ignorant of the toll asbestos is taking in Brazil on behalf of this company. The company has earned the title of “Saint of the Occupational Cancer” and Don Corleone in Brazil.
On February 20, 2004, she was officially informed that she was no longer authorized to carry out inspections or mobilize workers and be confined to the Sao Paulo office.
In December 2001, this Union filed a petition to the prosecutor reducing the values for compensation for the victims in 75 percent from the values proposed by the prosecutor. The prosecutor’s proposals were-Saint Gobain offered 50 percent of the prosecutor’s ideas and the union 25 percent of the prosecutor’s plans saying that they would accept medicines and medical services coming from the same corporative doctors that for more than 20 years never made a diagnosis on asbestos related diseases. This created huge resentment and leading to the signing of a manifesto by Gianassi, which denounced the minister to the workers affiliated to his Union saying that the Union was created through a manoeuvre between the Compagnie du Saing Gobain and the ex-labour ministry in 1985.
The Union collected the pamphlet and sent it to the ex-minister who filed the criminal charge and an administrative complaint against her with the Labour Minister where she works. This administrative complaint waits for the results of the criminal charge. If the court condemns her she could loose her 20 years job at the Labour Inspection because it is alleged that she has offended the ex-minister. Saint Gobain has plans to condemn her so that her work can be halted since they do not wish that the Union after 18 years with the same President should loose power of representation despite the fact that it never went on a strike or confront Saint-Gobain in workers interest.
This is the second lawsuit against the Inspector in six years; both cases stem from her support for injured asbestos workers. In 1998, she was sued by Eternit, a major Brazilian asbestos company, for comments she made about the company’s treatment of ailing workers; the case was dismissed.
Other strategies to silence Inspector Giannasi have included death threats, harassment and the withdrawal of travel privileges. On December 2, 2003, the Inspector was informed that her visit to an asbestos cement factory in Northern Brazil, scheduled for the next day, had been cancelled; on December 15, permission for her to inspect another plant was rescinded. On February 20, 2004, she was informed that she was no longer authorized to carry out any workplace inspections; henceforth, Labor Inspector Giannasi would be confined to the Sao Paulo office.
Further proof of the malevolent role of asbestos forces in the persecution of Inspector Giannasi was contained in a menacing letter she received two weeks ago. It blamed the dramatic decline in the fortunes of the Brazilian asbestos industry not on increasing awareness of the hazards neither of asbestos nor on declining public demand but on the intervention of Giannasi and the asbestos victims in the domestic asbestos market! Despite the massed forces of the asbestos industry, the Labor Ministry, the corrupt Judiciary and the Brazilian establishment, Inspector Giannasi remains determined to prove her innocence and expose the company’s illegal behaviour.
In the case in question, the current powerful Union, which represents all the asbestos cement workers, is from minister’s birth city of Capivari. The principal industrial plant in the city is Saint Gobain, currently the biggest asbestos cement plant with around 450 workers. Fernanda's defence lies in showing that the ex-minister in question favoured Saint-Gobain in creating Union in an irregular manner contrary to the current labour code. It is a pity that lawyers act like mercenaries even in cases where they are defending humanitarian causes.
The criminal suit of the ex-minister is linked with the creation of the Union because Fernanda had denounced the creation of the false Union made by the ex-minister on the request of Saint Gobain. In early 2002, Pagotto, the director, Saint Gobain with the trouble of the 1984/85 strike by the legally constituted Union in mind decided to create their own Worker’s Union with the help of the then Minister.
The creation of the Union is contrary to the provisions of law because it didn’t comply with the law which determined that for a body to become a Union there has to be an association with 3 years of existence but the then minister had accepted that the association could be made Union with only 1 year of existence.
It can be proved that the affiliated members who appear in the documents to create the Union never learnt about the existence of such association and some of these members are part of the asbestos victims association. They have also declared officially that they had never participated in any such association. One of the listed members in the directory of the association is the director of the asbestos victims association.
The assembly to transform the association into Union was held on 29th December, 1985 when the factories were closed because of collective vacation and all the Unions were in recess for the Christmas and New Year’s Party. One of the members showed as affiliated was already Director of a Union that Saint-Gobain planned to remove. Can any one imagine somebody creating an Union that would replace his own Union and loose their condition of Unionist. These mistakes are grossly manifest.
If all these documents could be put together in Fernanda’s defence the ex-minister, Saint Gobain and the Union would be caught in a knot. Therefore, they are doing everything to discredit and condemn her.
The French media ought to take note of these details and investigate the case. There seems to be a link between Saint-Gobain and Judge Rocha Mattos, the judge who was supposed to try Fernanda's case, it would be wise for her lawyers to prove the gravity of the problem so that the Justice Ministry and Public Ministry can be asked to break open the confidential phone calls and bank accounts.
Earlier on January 28, 2004, Labor Inspectors Nelson Jose da Silva, Eratostenes de Almeida Gonsalves and Joao Batista Soares Lage were brutally murdered on a public highway. They were on their way to raid a soybean plantation, which was, it is alleged, using illegal slave labour.
What is at stake is the life interest of workers and consumers which Fernanda represents on the one hand and the reputation of an ex-Labour Minister, credibility of the Saint Gobain with its 400 years history, which controls the market of the building materials in Brazil and a powerful “Yellow” Union on the other hand.
She has been a Labour Inspector in Sao Paulo State for more than twenty years. She has received both Brazilian and international honours for her work with asbestos victims; in 2001, she was a successful finalist in the prestigious Claudia Award for Brazil’s Woman of the Year and was elected a Fellow of the renowned Collegium Ramazzini.
As a civil servant, Inspector Giannasi has not had a salary increase in over seven years; the costs of Inspector Giannasi’s lawyers are being borne by the Inspector herself. Giannasi is still paying off the legal bills she incurred defending herself in the unsuccessful defamation action brought by the Brazilian asbestos company, Eternit S.A., in 1998.
P.S: Letters of support for Fernanda can be sent to Brazil’s
President Luiz Inacio LULA da Silva:
pr@planalto.gov.br and
secom@planalto.gov.br Ministry of Justice:
gabinetemj@mj.gov.br Labor Ministry:
ministro@mte.gov.br Senator Eduardo Suplicy:
esuplicy@senador.senado.gov.br Deputado Joao Paulo Cunha:
joaopaulocunha@terra.com.br Deputado Roberto Gouveia:
gabinete@robertogouveia.org.br Saint-Gobain:
actionnaires@saint-gobain.com 
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