Negócios e Direitos Humanos: uma análise das tentativas de neutralizar as denúncias de violações contra direitos humanos de empresas que atuam em Uberlândia

Abstract

This research focuses on the topic of Business and Human Rights, aiming to analyze attempts to neutralize abuse allegations against Human Rights (HR) from companies operating in the regional context of the city of Uberlândia. The literature review focuses on the emergence of human rights and on the notions that the term gained over the development of this theme in the business area. The discussion of fundamental rights in the corporate sphere emerged within Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). After successive reports of business involvement in HR violations, the first international initiatives came to regulate corporate performance and its impacts on HR. One of the milestones of the new phase of greater attention to HR and business activities is Professor John Ruggie's mandate at SRSG, at the UN, which started in 2005, and resulted in the publication of the Guiding Principles in Business and Human Rights: Implementing the Framework of United Nations “Protect, Respect and Remedy”. The empirical material of the research are secondary sources, such as newspaper reports, news portals, reports produced by NGOs, blogs and other publications resulting from initiatives focused on environmental and HR causes, documentaries and short films found in the news portals Repórter Brasil and Business and Human Rights Resource Center and sustainability reports and institutional files made available by multinational companies accessed on the “United Nations Global Compact” website. From the empirical material, I analyzed denunciations of cases of HR violations from 9 multinationals with operations in Uberlândia-MG and, based on theoretical support and selected secondary sources, I opted for Thematic Analysis as a methodological proposal to achieve the objectives, in consistency with the Critical Management Studies movement. With this contribution, I seek to offer an understanding on the arguments used by multinational companies operating in the city of Uberlândia about the denunciations of violations and abuse against human rights as a result of their actions. The results showed corporate attitudes of beneficial and silent complicity in violations (Wettstein, 2010, 2012b, 2013), of abstaining from responsibilities as global players (Nolan & Taylor, 2009) and a recurring attempt to deny complaints, through immediate denial of events, disqualification and characterization of complaints, the denial of the past, literal and implicit through lobbyists, lawyers, advertising campaigns, journalists and scientists hired to defend corporate positions.