Tag Archives: Cascavel/Ceará

The Instigator, Seductress & Vampire: Competition among Women in the Brazilian Workplace

16 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by in Brazil, Working Life

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Competition among women in the workplaceCompetition among Women in the Workplace
Photo Credit: CulturaMix.com

With rapid growth at the leather company, the challenges soared. More work. More staff. More intrigues. More stress. Wherever women gather, troubles follow. Envy, jealousy, and power become our deadliest enemies.

The Instigator was the Brazilian wife of one of the Italian supervisors in the tannery. She joined the Cut-and-Sew Factory in a supervisory position for which she was ill-prepared. With her incompetence unmasked, she used her Italian connection to belittle the factory staff and instigate conflicts among the female sewers. Tempers flared.

Complaints from our clients placed me in a conflict situation with the Instigator’s husband. In defense of her man, she added me to her Enemy List. When the company let her go, peace returned to the Cut-and-Sew Factory.

The Seductress used different tactics to get her way. A single woman in her late twenties, she held a business administrative degree from her home state. Like all out-of-state staff members, she lived in the nearby township of Cascavel. Her sexual encounters became the talk of the small coastal town. Monday mornings began with the circulation of her weekend escapades. The young, local, female staff relished recounting the spicy details.

The Seductress reveled in her conquests and fame. “I have them in the palm of my hands,” she declared one day, smacking her palm. ‘Them’ referred to our company directors.

Instead of focusing on her work, she roamed porn sites, read her fan mail, and flirted with men on the phone. Assured of her privileged status, we were shocked the day she was fired.

When I was appointed manager of the export department and began training my team, the Vampire – a local, young mother in an unstable marriage – became my Achilles heel. She sucked my energies with her jealousy of new team members, especially those with English language skills. Thwarting my attempts to have her train newcomers to use the company’s operating system, she sabotaged their work forcing me to seek help from the technical staff.

To complicate matters, the Vampire started a clandestine liaison with an Italian director. Nothing is secret in a small town. Her affair triggered a chain of intrigues and alliances among the staff within and outside of our department.

She had demonstrated great potential for growth as an import-export professional. With advance technical training and fluency in English, she could one day become the company’s export manager. I had erred in keeping her on the team. Better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all. Hopefully in time, she would see her folly.

In a small town like Cascavel where jobs are scarce, competition becomes fierce. Women like the Instigator, Seductress, and Vampire transform the workplace into a battlefield. One always has to be a step ahead of the enemy. Always alert. I had to be tough to survive. That I succeeded in meeting our shipment deadlines and attending to the needs of our clients to their satisfaction was no easy accomplishment.

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Brazil: Working with Finished Cow Leather Covers for Upholstery

17 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by in Brazil, Working Life

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Leather Recliner SofaLeather Recliner Sofa

 

While I was enjoying the quiet working environment in the Finance Department at Italbras Leather Producer & Exporter Ltd.,* new developments were underway in the Italian-Brazilian joint venture company. At the newly completed Cut & Sew Factory, about a brisk five-minute walk from the tannery, over a hundred young women—from Cascavel, Ceará, where Italbras was located—were being trained in the operation of German-made industrial sewing machines.

When Mr. Leonelli,* our Italian Commercial Director, invited me to be part of his four-person export team, he made me the contact person for our English-speaking clients, including our first Cut & Sew client. Thus began my involvement with the Cut & Sew Leather Factory and its subsequent development to include clients from Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, and the United States.

On my first visit to the factory, I was surprised to see that the sewing machines were mounted on high tables requiring the women to work on their feet. The factory manager, a leather industry expert from South Brazil, explained that this practice reduced injuries and health risks. Using plywood patterns produced by the factory’s digital cutting machine, young men worked at large tables dissecting hides into the pieces needed to make the covers.

Sewers worked on different sections of the sofa covers. The woman responsible for sewing together the various sections had the heaviest load to handle.

“How do you manage with the weight?” I asked her.
“It gives me pain in my shoulders and back,” she told me.

They were simple, intelligent, hardworking women, many of them married with children. I discovered on subsequent visits to the factory that some of them were illiterate.

After quality inspection of the finished leather covers, a team of young men took care of packing the covers on pallets for shipment. Our Cut & Sew Leather Factory produced covers for ottomans, chairs, love seats, sofas, reclining sofas, and sectionals (the most complex design).

Brazilian leather exports of hides and skins to date have already shown signs of an increase over last year exports. In their Analysis of Brazilian Exports of Hides and Skins for October 2013, the Brazil Center for the Tanning Industry (CICB – Centro das Indústrias de Curtumes do Brasil) reported that exports in October 2013, totaling US$236,908 million, exceeded exports for the previous month by 6.8 percent and 28.3 percent over exports in October 2012. Finished leather comprised 55.5 percent of total exports.

Ceará ranked fifth among Brazil’s states with the largest leather exports: São Paulo (20.3%), Rio Grande do Sul (19.8%), Goiás (12.5%), Paraná (11.6%), Ceará (7.9%), and Mato Grosso do Sul (6.4%).

For the period January to October 2013, the top three destinations for Brazilian leather exports were China/Hong Kong (35.7%), Italy (21.2%), and the United States (10.2%).

For readers interested in learning more about Brazil’s leather industry and its major producers and exporters, more data is available on the CICB website, as well as the names and contact information of their associate members.

 

* Fictitious name

Be the Solution Not the Problem

27 Sunday Oct 2013

Posted by in Brazil, Working Life

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Export Team with Visiting ClientExport Team with Visiting Client
In the rear: Window overlooking leather factory
Cascavel – Ceará – July 2001

 

When I joined the Export Department at Italbras Leather Producer & Exporter,* I was the oldest woman on the team. The much younger and well-qualified Brazilian export manager put me to shame. She was fluent in three languages: her native language Portuguese, English, and Italian. What’s more, she was adept at navigating the factory’s electronic system for control of production and shipments.

After experiencing the vulnerability of MS Excel spreadsheets for controlling foreign exchange contracts and payment receipts, I proposed the development of a program specific to our needs. Fernando*, the handsome, young newcomer to the Finance Department, was assigned the task. To facilitate collaboration, his desk was aligned with mine, facing each other. His presence unsettled my female co-workers.

“Watch out, Rose. He’s after your job,” one said.
“He even listens to your phone conversations with the banks,” another added.
“Don’t teach him everything.”

How could he develop the program if I didn’t explain every small detail to him? Italbras was a year-old company preparing to take off. Now was the time to put sound systems in place for increased performance and accuracy. If Administration intended to hand over my work to Fernando, they must have other plans for me. I hoped.

Be part of the solution, I told myself. Don’t create any problems for Fernando. Perhaps I was being naïve.

Weeks later, when the Finance Department was moved to a large spacious office on the top floor of the Administrative Building, Fernando and I joined them. Oh, blessed reprieve! No more noise of rumbling drums and battering machines. At last, I could think straight.

In the beginning, the export manager forwarded clients’ payment details by e-mail. Soon thereafter, Mr. Leonelli,* our Italian Commercial Director, instructed all clients to forward payment details directly to my e-mail address. With the addition of new clients and increased exports, I began working with several banks in Fortaleza and São Paulo. When Fernando completed each phase of the program (Access), I tested it for errors.

At lunchtime, I joined my import-export co-workers in the company’s dining hall, located on the first floor of the Administrative Building. All was well between us.

Then the bomb fell. A Friday afternoon. Our export manager was fired. I was summoned to an emergency departmental meeting the next day.

Why was she fired? We could only speculate. Leaving earlier that day, she did not return to Fortaleza with us on the company bus. Her qualifications, hard work, and dedication were not enough to secure her position. When we become a problem—for whatever reason, within our control or not—we lose our value to the company. It was a lesson I could not afford to forget.

At the meeting that Saturday, Mr. Leonelli formed a new three-person export team. Each one of us was directly responsible to him. On Monday morning, I handed over my workload to Fernando.

Back again to the rumbling drums.

 

* Fictitious name

Brazil: Adapting to a Tough Work Environment

29 Sunday Sep 2013

Posted by in Brazil, Working Life

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Inside Brazilian TanneryInterior of a Cow Leather Factory in North Brazil
Photo Credit: Otavio Araujo Blogspot

When I began working at Italbras Leather Producer & Exporter Ltd.,* I did not think that I would survive the three-month probationary period. My body had a hard time adapting to waking at 4:00 a.m. After oversleeping one morning during the first week on the job, I started waking every hour to check the time. The stress took its toll. Before my probationary period ended, I had suffered two bouts of the flu.

Never before had I worked in such a noisy office environment. The Export Manager, her assistant, and I shared a spacious, open office with the Industrial Director (a paulista from the State of São Paulo) and his two production assistants, and the Import Manager. We occupied the top floor of a three-story building constructed within the leather factory. Half-walls of glass gave us a view of the factory floor.

The incessant rumbles of giant, rotating drums, blended with the cacophony of other machinery, disrupted my concentration. The constant movement and chatter of factory staff compounded my distress.

The company’s two cultures presented a graver challenge. The one-year-old company was a Brazilian-Italian joint-venture. The Italians provided the machinery and technology for finishing cow leather for upholstery. The Brazilian meat processing group, based in São Paulo, supplied the hides. The ‘wet blue’ tanned hides used at Italbras were tanned at another location.

In addition to being part of the export team and working under the watchful eye of the Industrial Director, I had to answer directly to two external bosses. Mr. Leonelli,* the Italian Commercial Director, supervised my control of payment receipts from overseas clients. For my control of export financing through Foreign Exchange Contracts (Contratos de Câmbio de Exportação), I worked closely with the Brazilian Finance Director in São Paulo.

Every three months, Mr. Leonelli—with whom the Export Manager maintained daily contact by phone—visited our factory in Cascavel, Ceará. Our first encounter was a disaster. I had committed some grave error in handling the account for our major American client. He had a fit. In a loud, agitated voice, he reprimanded me—in Italian.

Everyone tuned in to witness my public whipping. Seated still and attentive, I kept my eyes on him. When his tirade ended, I asked the Export Manager, fluent in Italian and English, to interpret what had just transpired. Knowledge of Italian was not a prerequisite for my post, but it became clear that I would need to learn the language.

I never got used to his verbal outbursts in Italian. Inevitably, in spite of my diligence, mistakes did occur. In assuming responsibility for my mistakes, acting on his criticisms about my work, understanding his vision of our goals, and learning new ways of handling a task or problem, I succeeded in establishing a productive, professional relationship with him.

Over time, I came to appreciate Mr. Leonelli’s excellence as a global commercial executive. Under his tutelage, I became a ‘top grain’ international trade professional.

* Fictitious name

Brazil: Pushing Beyond My Limits

15 Sunday Sep 2013

Posted by in Brazil, Working Life

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East Coast Highway CE-040 - Ceara - BrazilEast Coast Highway CE-040 – Ceará – Brazil
Photo Credit: blogdotamandua.com.br

 

Sometimes in life, events occur that force us to push beyond our limits. When I got the highly coveted position as Administrative Supervisor of foreign payment receipts and Foreign Exchange Contracts for exports (Contratos de Câmbio de exportação) in the Export Department at Italbras Leather Producer & Exporter S.A. (fictitious name), my first challenge was the distance I had to travel to and from the company’s Head Office and tannery in Cascavel, Ceará.

I do not drive. Making the 38-mile trip to Cascavel—along Ceará’s principal federal Highway BR-116 via a metropolitan bus line—for the job interview was a hurdle I had to overcome. Since the company provided private transport for its staff in Fortaleza and its environs, I did not have the day-to-day hassle of using public transport.

According to the pick-up schedule prepared by the company’s Personnel Manager, I was the first on the schedule, starting at 5:00 a.m. In order to get out of bed by 4:30 a.m., I had to set my alarm for 4:00 a.m. I’m a slow riser. This meant that I could no longer cook lunch for my sons before leaving for work, as was my practice over the years. I began cooking in the evenings when I got home. That was usually around seven. First to be picked up; last to be dropped off.

During the first few months, I stayed awake during the journey, soaking in the scenery in the quiet early mornings. Our bus, equipped with reclining seats and a restroom in the rear—later, we got a small TV mounted behind the driver’s seat—took Highway CE-040 connecting Ceará’s beaches east of Fortaleza. Within a month, the novelty of travelling across unfamiliar territory soon faded.

Owing to the round trip to pick up other staff members, our trip to Italbras took two hours. After a while, I was able to return to a deep sleep. I recall my embarrassment the time I overslept while everyone disembarked without waking me. The guys never let me forget that incident. Our return trips on Friday afternoons, at the end of our work week, were good times spent together.

Our workdays began at 7:00 a.m. and ended at 5:00 p.m. from Mondays to Thursdays and at 4:00 p.m. on Fridays, with an hour for lunch. A trained culinary staff prepared and served breakfast, lunch, and dinner to all workers in the company’s dining hall.

After a couple of months of my new waking and cooking schedule, my sixteen- and eighteen-year-old sons offered to take care of the cooking. No prompting from me. Without their support, I could not have taken on the greatest challenge of my professional life in Brazil.