Wineries reaction was bad, experts say – 06/03/2023 – Market

On Wednesday (1st), comedian Paulo Vieira started his show on Big Brother Brasil complaining about the workload, since two participants were eliminated in the same week. At the end, he said: “in a little while this program will put some Salton grapes for me to step on here”.

The joke on national television illustrates the size of the institutional crisis that three gaucho wineries –Aurora, Garibaldi and Salton– have been facing since February 22, when an operation rescued 207 workers from Bahia hired by a third-party company, Fênix Prestação de Serviços, and housed in a pension in Bento Gonçalves (RS) in a situation analogous to slavery, according to authorities.

The rescue was followed by a series of reports of threats, assaults and extortion after a group escaped from the barracks. Employees of the inn where the workers were staying allege exaggeration.

Other consequences of the case were the suspension of the participation of the three wineries in export fairs of ApexBrasil (Brazilian Agency for the Promotion of Exports and Investments) and the collection of measures by the Brazilian association of supermarkets. Rede Zona Sul, in Rio de Janeiro, removed Aurora wines from its supermarket shelves.

Since then, the manifestations of the wineries have occurred through official notes and letters to society. Aurora, for example, published a note on the 23rd saying that it demanded from contracted companies “all the documentation foreseen in the labor legislation” and that it provided “quality food during the work shift”. On Thursday (2), he released a letter apologizing and saying he was ashamed of the episode.

A SheetAurora sent a list of commitments that include not hiring outsourced labor during the harvest period, improving supplier inspection processes and seeking independent audits to certify its social responsibility practices.

Salton, on its website, announced measures such as a review of the supplier selection and contracting process and a schedule to carry out audits with providers and suppliers on a recurring and systematic basis. Garibaldi published a letter to the community, but without objective measures.

The three wineries declined interview requests, and have not posted on social media since the scandal, with the exception of notes.

Crisis management specialists criticize the use of official notes as a communication strategy.

“The north to get out of this crisis is to make genuine changes. The note demonstrates the opposite. If you want to make up instead of solving, write a beautiful text there and that’s it. Today, you use ChatGPT and it generates it for you. So every time this will lose credibility”, says Renan Bulgueroni, managing partner of Hawkz, a company specialized in Marketing and Digital Reputation.

“People are relating to the brand, with its values. So they want to see a face, someone communicating their intentions. It’s humanizing the brand. With social networks today, it’s like this: the logo came out and someone came to show their face. So, in a moment of crisis like this, the biggest recommendation is to pull someone along”, he says.

By not giving a face to the discourse of brands, experts warn of the risk of involuntary and unwanted personalization by third parties. Like the case of the councilor of Caxias do Sul Sandro Fantinel (Patriota), who defended the entrepreneurs of the Serra Gaúcha with a speech against Bahians. He was expelled from the party and will face impeachment proceedings.

Another bad example, according to Bulgueroni, is that of Garibaldi’s marketing manager, Maiquel Vignatti, who in his LinkedIn profile published a text saying that “criminalizing, boycotting or even censoring a production chain” on account of a “misconduct ” would be “to do justice with lacerations”. After the repercussions, the executive deleted his profile on the network. When contacted, Garibaldi understood that it should not comment because it was not a company publication.

“Instead of recognizing an execrable problem and communicating an effort to find solutions, this publication does the opposite: it places the blame on others and conveys an image of arrogance. A person from the company manifesting himself in this way makes the public doubt that any type of communication institutional is genuine”, says the specialist.

Coordinator of FGVethics, a center for studies on ethics, transparency, integrity and compliance at Fundação Getúlio Vargas, professor Ligia Maura Costa points out that the case is educational on how brands can pay institutionally if they adopt what she calls “selective blindness” about its service providers and suppliers.

As a way out of the crisis, it indicates the adoption of education measures and subsequent monitoring of good environmental, social and governance practices —the so-called ESG management model. Not just inside companies, but in all production chains. In addition to adopting a speech that does not omit responsibilities.

“Why say they [vinícolas] They did not know? Spare me. No service provider does miracles, so if a service costs less, it’s because you chose not to know how that worker ended up there in your company. No company of this size is naive enough to believe in a free lunch”, says Ligia Maura.

The perception that the case of the wineries can be educational is shared by labor attorney Manuella Gedeon, who is part of the MPT (Ministério Público do Trabalho) group that assesses the extent of the companies’ responsibility in the case.

She points to the case of Bento Gonçalves as an undesirable, but predictable, development of the law that allowed companies to outsource core activities. And he says that similar scandals may appear in other sectors if large companies do not immediately review their relationships with outsourced companies.

“This is because complaints are starting to appear from companies, as was the case with this one (Fênix), which are not used to provide a specialized service, but only to intermediate cheap labor. Ultimately, this makes it precarious to the point of reaching the slavery.”

“As outsourcing is permitted by law, we are moving towards a future in which wineries and other companies can be held responsible for all the people who provide services to them, regardless of whether they are outsourced or not”, says the attorney.