When Joao Paulo de Oliveira was fired in 1980 by Rapistan, a Michigan-based manufacturer of conveyor belts, his troubles were only beginning.
In the ensuing years, the military dictatorship that ran Brazil arrested or detained him about 10 times. Police cars passed by his house in Sao Paulo's industrial suburbs, he said, and officers would make throat-slashing gestures or wave guns at him.
Oliveira's apparent offense: Being a union organizer during an era when the military considered strikes to be tantamount to communist subversion.