Date filed
21 August 2018
Keywords
Countries of harm
Current status
No resolution
Sector
NCP

Allegations

On 21 August 2018, the union Articulation of Rural Employees of the State of Minas Gerais (ADERE MG) and the NGO Conectas Human Rights filed a complaint with the Brazilian NCP against six multinational coffee brands. The complainants argue that Nestlé, Jacobs Douwe Egberts, Starbucks, McDonald’s, Dunkin Donuts, and Illy have not taken proper steps to address risks of forced labour and other rights violations in their supply chains. The NCPs of the home countries of the involved businesses (United States, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Italy) have also been informed of the complaint.

According to the complainants, the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais is a key location for coffee supply chains. It produces more than half of the coffee exported by Brazil, which is one of the biggest coffee producers in the world. However, the complaint asserts that Minas Gerais is also a high-risk area for labour and human rights violations. In the past three years, authorities have rescued 820 workers from conditions analogous to slavery at the state. The situation has been aggravated due to budget cuts that led to decreased state monitoring.

In 2016, reports by independent media and research centre Danwatch and Reporter Brasil demonstrated that suppliers of Nestlé, Jacobs Douwe Egberts, Starbucks, McDonald’s, Dunkin Donuts, and Illy might have been involved with modern slavery. According to the complainants, the nature of each company’s link to the violation varies: while in certain instances the company commercialised coffee which might have been produced by workers subject to forced labour, other companies only maintained relations with cooperatives that did so.

Since then, the complainants have been monitoring the working conditions in coffee farms in the region, documenting several instances of forced labour and other serious labour rights violations. ADERE and Conectas reached out to the six coffee brands, asking whether they could guarantee that they had not bought coffee produced in the farms where these violations occurred. The organisations also requested a list of suppliers, and asked which measures the companies had adopted to fix the flaws exposed by the 2016 reports. The complainants assert that although some of the companies responded, none publicised their supplier list, nor indicated measures adopted to ensure remedy for victims and correct norms and policies in view of past flaws.

The complaint asserts that Nestlé, Jacobs Douwe Egberts, Starbucks, McDonald’s, Dunkin Donuts, and Illy have violated several provisions of the OECD Guidelines, international human rights law, and Brazilian legislation, in connection with this situation. ADERE and Conectas call for the six brands to provide remedy to victims, and to work collaboratively with complainants and other stakeholders to develop a joint action plan to prevent future cases of modern slavery in coffee farms in Minas Gerais.

Outcome

On 12 September 2018, the Brazilian NCP acknowledged receipt of the complaint. In early 2019, it informed Conectas by telephone that it had accepted the case, and requested that the complainants separate the complaint into six separate cases to facilitate the mediation process with each individual company. The complainants honoured this request and agreed to split the complaint into six separate cases.

However, during a meeting between the complainants and NCP at the end of 2019, the NCP unexpectedly retracted its earlier statement and claimed that it had not officially accepted the complaint for good offices, and that it was still analysing the complaint. From that point forward, the complainants sought to ensure that communication with the NCP take place over email or written correspondence, to maintain a clear record of the NCP’s atypical commitments and process.

In April 2020, the Brazilian NCP asserted it had received responses from four of the companies (Dunkin’ Donuts, Jacob Egberts, Mc Donald’s and Nestlé). The NCP said it had accepted those four complaints and would ask for more information from the companies. However, the NCP issued no written initial assessments.

As of January 2022, mediation began with Jacob Douwe Egberts (JDE).

On 21 July 2025, the Brazilian NCP published its final statement. The statement details that the NCP accepted the complaint on 3 November 2020 and offered its good offices to both parties in February/March 2021. The complainants accepted the NCP’s offer in May 2021 and JDE in September 2021, but this was withdrawn in September 2024. According to the NCP, the reason for JDE’s withdrawal was lack of consensus on what would be discussed during mediation. During the complaint process, the Dutch NCP acted as a supporting NCP because JDE is a Dutch-headquartered company, but the alleged harms occurred in Brazil.

In its final statement, the Brazilian NCP made several recommendations, including for JDE to “continue investing” in promoting social dialogue and the continuous improvement of its due diligence mechanisms. The NCP committed to following-up on its recommendations in one year.

OECD Watch contacted the complainants for their opinion on the complaint process and the NCP’s final statement. The complainants criticised how the NCP’s final statement repeated much of JDE’s own statements, and they also disputed the NCP’s statement that “most of the demands listed by the complainants were addressed in JDE’s initiatives and continuous improvement actions to combat forced labor”. They also take issue with the NCP’s recommendation that JDE “continue investing” in promoting social dialogue and the continuous improvement of its due diligence mechanisms, whereas in the view of the complainant JDE is not already doing so. In October 2025, ADERE-MG commented:

“After more than seven years of waiting for some form of justice, how can we explain to workers who have had their dignity violated that the company has deigned to sit down at the table to discuss the case? JDE’s position only demonstrates the disregard that large companies have for workers. It is regrettable that the PCN [NCP], in addition to allowing such a serious violation to go unpunished, reserved its final statement to tout the company’s irrelevant actions. Such results serve as an incentive for new violations, which will continue to mark Brazilian coffee with the stigma of slavery.”

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