Brazil's aircraft maker Embraer has filed a lawsuit against American-based Gulfstream, a manufacturer of executive jets, charging the Yankee firm of trying to hire its employees in order to steal the Brazilian company's know how and also its clients.

According to the daily O Estado de S. Paulo, Embraer is also accusing Gulfstream of disrespecting the Brazilian labor legislation. 

As O Estado tells it, the dispute started in April, when Gulfstream published an ad in English in newspapers of São José dos Campos's, the city in the interior of São Paulo where Embraer has its headquarters.

The ads offered a job to aeronautical engineers, who were willing to move to Savannah, in the state of Georgia to work at Gulfstream's main plant. Interviews were to be conducted between June 1st and June 3 in São José dos Campos.

Embraer, however, just before the interviews were supposed to start, was able to get a preliminary injunction from the Labor Public Ministry, which put a stop to the selection process and added the sting of about US$ 1 million in fines in case the judicial order was not heeded.  

Embraer says that it respects the free will of its employees, but stresses that it has invested substantially in the training of its professionals and that recruiting by a foreign company that does not operate in Brazil is not only illegal but also a threat to its business. 

Guilherme Vieira Machado, the commercial representative of Gulfstream in Brazil, is not making any comments according to O Estado. He informed that the subject is being dealt with directly by the head office in the United States. The law office of Felsberg Associates has been hired by Gulfstream to make its case.

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written by ch.c., September 12, 2006

in this world, many companies in developing countries countries are recruiting executives from developed countries. The same arguments could thus be said AGAINST
the ones you are using.

And everyone knows that developed countries have invested far more in the training of their employees than you ever did.
Therefore that you hire foreign executives is normal......but not the opposite even if it happens only seldomly !

Wellll....that is the Brazilian way of life......: RECIPROCITY is not even in your dictionary.
Exactly the same is happening at the WTO negotiations.

In Brazilian minds there is only one way....: when it benefits only their own interests.

Brazil is a loser and that explain why rules are never ever 2 ways but only 1 way..

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written by J. Correa, September 13, 2006

To the idiot commentator above. (Mr. Idiot)
Put your money where your mouth is by first identifying yourself and dazzling all of us with your impeccable qualifications… that by now all of us, the fortunate ones, knows so well, thanks to your profound daily comments illuminating all of us “the idiot mindless Brazilians” with your incredible and vast knowledge ranging from Economic Czar to Astro Physics… from Aeronautical engineering to nuclear Physicist… and Yesss you have an answer to every single problem that this helpless nation of idiots presently has…and yet nobody lesson to you…. All these endless hours reading every single Brazilian news and correcting all the claims as you see it… and yet nobody lessons… how can a country with 180 million people plus can’t generate one superior single smart person, like yourself, to shine the light in the right way…so the mortals, can one day see things your way?
How long are we going to sit still and let you hide behind your monitor screen under “persona anonimato” is beyond me, but if nothing else it shows how gracious and peaceful the Brazilian people is under a vicious mind.

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Aerospace Fee Trade
written by Guy Lariviere, December 21, 2006

As an Aerospace professional that has worked both at Gulfstream and Embraer and currently have a home in Sao Jose, I do see the un-balanced trade agreement Brazil has with the rest of the world. Brazil is about to loose it’s free trade status with the USA, a big importer of automotive brake parts from a Brazilian company. Brazil has always had a 100% import duty for all American made goods brought into Brazil. Try buying an American made car in Brazil if you can, you will pay exactly two times the price that you would pay for that same car in the USA. On the last big program at Embraer (ERJ170/190), they brought in many foreign engineers for their expertise in aerospace. Who made the investment to train these individuals? Should the countries that had invested in the education and training of these engineers have put a block on them from working in Brazil? In reality what has happen with Embraer blocking Gulfstream from advertising in the Sao Jose newspaper is very much like something you would see in a country run by a dictatorship rather than a democracy. I think it is a great opportunity for a Brazilian to work abroad and possibly bring home experience and knowledge otherwise not available. North Korea is another country with similar policies; would you want to liver there?

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