In August 2025, Brazil’s labour court ordered Volkswagen to pay over USD $30 million in damages in connection with systematic forced labour at a company farm during the period of Brazil’s dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s.

VW has indicated they will appeal the decision, stating that it has “consistently defended the principles of human dignity and strictly complied with all applicable labor laws and regulations.”

The court heard that about 300 workers were hired to clear forest and prepare farmland between 1974 and 1986 at a farm in Para state, owned by Volkswagen through a subsidiary. The farm was used for cattle ranching and logging. The workers were hired on irregular contracts that created relations of debt bondage, which forced them to stay on the farm. They worked under surveillance of armed guards, while living in poor housing conditions and receiving insufficient food. No medical care was provided, and malaria was common.

The Labor Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation in 2019, drawing on documentation that tracked the operations for many years. Based on documentation gathered by a local priest, and witness testimony, prosecutors formally charged Volkswagen in 2024.

Volkswagen faces historic $30 million compensation for Amazon labor abuses in Brazil, Gabriela Sa Pessoa, August 30, 2025

Volkswagen’s Dark History in Brazil, Dirk Kaufman, 16 June 2025

In 1996, the US oil company Unocal was sued in the United States for the alleged use of forced labour organised by the Burmese government prior to the construction of an oil pipeline.

An out of court settlement was reached in December 2004. In a joint statement, the two sides said that Unocal would pay the fifteen plaintiffs an unspecified amount of money and fund programs to improve living conditions for people affected by the pipeline, as well as those “who may have suffered hardships”.

The plaintiffs in this case were a group of Burmese citizens who were allegedly forced to perform labor for the benefit of the Yadana Gas Pipeline Project, in which Unocal was a joint venture partner with the military government. The allegations of forced labour were accompanied by allegations of other abuses by military officials hired to provide security to the pipeline project, including murder, sexual assaults, and forced displacement. The victims described several occasions in which soldiers under the command of the Burmese military leadership, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), allegedly “entered villages to either force relocation of the residents or to recruit individuals into serving as porters for the performance of various menial tasks. Soldiers allegedly arrested, beat or executed individuals who were unwilling or physically unable to perform the assigned tasks, as well as attacking family members of those targeted for forced labor.” (Earthrights)

The plaintiffs alleged these acts constituted violations of international and national law, including forced labor and crimes against humanity of killing, rape and torture. These violations were were alleged as torts under US law, for example, “wrongful death, battery, false imprisonment, assault, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, negligence per se, negligent hiring, negligent supervision.”

Sources:

Case summary, Earthrights

Federal Complaint, John Doe I et al v. Unocal Corp et al 6/7/02 BC 237 980 (county of LA Sup Ct.);

John Doe I et al v. Unocal Corp DC Case No. 00-56603; 00-56628 (9th Cir. 2002)

Rachel Chambers, “The Unocal Settlement: Implications for the Developing Law on Corporate Complicity in Human Rights Abuses” Human Rights Brief 13, no. 1 (2005): 14-16.

In the wake of World War II, courts in the Allied occupation zones prosecuted senior German industrialists for their active participation in a system of forced labour and slavery established to exploit prisoners of war and inmates in concentration camps.

Directors and officers of three companies, Krupp AG, I. G. Farben, and Flick Holding Company faced charges of ‘slave labor’ (the Tribunals often used the terms ‘slavery’, ‘slave labour’, and ‘forced labour’ interchangeably.) The evidence gathered by the prosecution described a vast system of forced labour, both within Germany and throughout the territories it occupied, which was geared towards sustaining the German war economy and at the same time was integrated to the Nazi policy of genocide through work and murder in concentration camps.

I.G. Farben was shown to have used slave labour from the Auschwitz/Birkenau concentration camp, in the Farben factories established nearby. Evidence was presented that management actively sought from the Reich Labour Program, concentration camp inmates, as well as Russian and Polish forced labourers. The Tribunal stated that the company claim of being forced to use slave labour was not born out buy the facts:

“These workers were not forced on Farben. We are convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the officials in charge of Farben construction went beyond the necessity created by the pressure of governmental officials and may be justly charged with taking the initiative in planning for and availing themselves of the use of concentration-camp labor.’

The Tribunals heard extensive evidence of the systematic nature of the coercion involved in forced labour:

“The evidence showed that workers destined for the Reich were sent under guard to Germany, often packed in trains without adequate heat, food, clothing or sanitary facilities. The evidence further showed that the treatment of the labourers in Germany in many cases was brutal and degrading. The evidence relating to the Krupp Works at Essen showed that punishments of the most cruel kind were inflicted on the workers.”

Similarly, in agriculteral work;

“…employers were given authority to inflict corporal punishment and were ordered, if possible, to house them…in stables, not in their own homes. They were subject to constant supervision by the Gestapo and the SS, and if they attempted to leave their jobs they were sent to correction camps or concentration camps. The concentration camps were also used to increase the supply of labour. Concentration camp commanders were ordered to work their prisoners to the limits of their physical power.”

The Nazi system of forced labour sought to hide the coercion behind a significant amount of bureaucracy. In the subsequent tribunal sitting in judgment in the case of U.S.A v. Erhard Milch the Tribunal stated:

“It was sought to disguise the harsh realities of the German Foreign labour policy by the use of specious legal and economic terms, and to make such policy appear as the exercise of conventional labour relations and labour law. The fiction of a ‘labour contract’ was frequently resorted to …which implied that foreign workers were given a free choice to work or not to work for the German military industry. This, of course, was purely fictitious …Does anyone believe that the vast hordes of Slavic Jews who laboured in Germany’s war industries were accorded the rights of contracting parties? They were slaves, nothing less– kidnapped, regimented, herded under armed guards, and worked until they died from disease, hunger, exhaustion. …Exploitation was merely a convenient and profitable means of extermination…” (Milch Trial, vol.7 at 27)

Sources:

Anita Ramasastry, Corporate Complicity: From Nuremberg to Rangoon - An Examination of Forced Labor Cases and Their Impact on the Liability of Multinational Corporations, 20 20 Berkeley J. Int'l L. 91 91 (2002)

USA v. Erhard Milch, Case No. 39, Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals, Vol. 7 (United States Military Tribunal, 17 April 1947)

USA v. Karl Krauch, p. 1167; USA v. Karl Krauch et al., Trials of the War Criminals, Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10, Vols. VII and VIII, October 1946–April 1949 (1952).

“War Crimes of an Economic Nature - Labour Exploitation in War”, War Economies and International Law, Mark B. Taylor (Cambridge, 2021)