Rio, October 15, 2003 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - Rio de Janeiro is preparing to lead activities to fight all forms of discrimination practiced in the labor market. This is the proposal of the State Forum to Combat Discrimination in the Labor Market, installed today in a ceremony held in the auditorium of the State Public Interest Defense Agency.

The Forum will be permanent and is sponsored by the Nucleus of Citizenship and Labor of the Regional Labor Office, together with the Public Labor Defense Agency, with support from federal government organs. The proposal is to develop affirmative policies to enforce the quota system for handicapped people in companies and to end the requirement of "good appearance" (announced in classified ads and suspected of being a discriminatory code expression), among other issues.

The theme will be widely debated with representatives of various segments of society, in seminars which will also be held in other cities in the state, in order to gather information and encourage conscious involvement on the part of social actors to promote equal opportunity.

For the supervisor of the Regional Labor Office, Henrique Pinto, the results of studies done by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) contradict the traditional wisdom that Brazil is a country without problems of racism. He recalls that the difference in salaries between white males and black males varies from 60-70%, that women in general earn less than men, that physically handicapped people don't get jobs, and that HIV carriers are victims of discrimination. (DAS)