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LIBERIA: Rubber Workers Charge Slave-Like Conditions

Elisabeth Schreinemacher

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 15 2005 (IPS) - When Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was elected Africa’s first female head of state and Liberia’s 23rd president in October, she pledged to fight corruption, create jobs and restore electricity and water supplies.

In her acceptance speech, Johnson-Sirleaf announced that her transitional team had begun working toward a new administration that will reflect the cultural, political and ethnic diversity of Liberia. Her inauguration is set for Jan. 16, 2006.

Meanwhile, Liberia’s largest foreign investor, the multinational company Bridgestone Firestone, is embroiled in a controversy over its alleged use of child labour and toxic pesticides and fertilisers at Firestone’s giant rubber plantation outside the capital, Monrovia.

The company has portrayed itself as offering decent jobs, with health, educational and training opportunities. But last month, a lawsuit was filed in U.S. federal court in California accusing it of employing children and slave labour on its massive rubber plantation in Liberia.

The suit was filed by the Washington-based International Labour Rights Fund on behalf of 12 adult workers and 23 children who work and live on the plantation in Harbel, Liberia.

The Japanese-owned company, whose North American headquarters in located in Nashville, Tennessee, denies the charges.

The lawsuit claims workers begin their day at 4:30 in the morning in order to make their daily quota of tapping some 750 trees – a quota that can only be met if children join their fathers and in many cases, mothers by working from dawn to dusk.

The plaintiffs claim Firestone overseers not only knew about the pervasive use of child labour on their plantation, they actively encouraged it.

Responding to the charges, Dan Adomitis, president of Firestone Natural Rubber Company, told CNN on Nov. 12 that, “We have very strict policies about child labour. We do not hire anybody under 18 years of age, and we discourage parents from bringing their children to the fields with them.”

He added, “Our workers are represented by a union which bargains collectively on their behalf, and I think the relationship we have with our workers is very good.”

But Jackson E. Doe, minister of state for presidential affairs of Liberia, said on the same programme that, “Firestone has promised to improve their lives by building new schools, improve health condition and so forth. I don’t think Firestone has improved the lives of Liberians so much as what we expect.”

Jason Flomo, who has been living with six others in one of Firestone’s housing quarters on the plantation, said there are no toilets, running water or electricity.

Firestone blames the poor housing on the devastation caused by 14 years of civil war, which ended in August 2003 with a comprehensive peace agreement. Nigeria and the West African peacekeeping force ECOMOG assumed lead roles in the peace and rebuilding process.

The National Transitional Government of Liberia, composed of rebel, government, and civil society groups, assumed control in October 2003, paving the way for the general election won by Johnson-Sirleaf this year.

“Clearly Liberia needs to have the opportunity to have the resources to be able to turn the water back on and to have schools functioning and health care. To be able to get those resources, you need to freely tax those companies that are accountable,” said Emira Woods, co- director of the U.S.-based Foreign Policy in Focus, at a U.N. briefing earlier this month.

“Historically, and it has continued today, Firestone has been neglected in terms of tax liability,” Woods said.

Speaking to a Liberian newspaper this week, human rights campaigner Samuel Kofi Woods, regional representative of the Foundation for International Dignity, called on president-elect Johnson-Sirleaf to review the government’s current agreement with Firestone.

Woods said Sirleaf made a campaign promise to review the contract and that his organisation and others would hold her to that commitment.

“Obviously if that is not done, we will avail ourselves of the legal measures to ensure that it is done, because the agreement with Firestone did not take into consideration environmental assessments, neither did it improve substantially on the old agreement to provide guaranteed rights to the workers. It is unfair and we believe this government must review it,” he stressed.

Firestone is not the only U.S. company being sued for violating international human rights laws.

The International Labour Rights Fund has also filed cases here against agribusiness giants Nestle, Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill, alleging their involvement in the trafficking, torture and forced labour of children who cultivate and harvest the cocoa beans which the companies import from Africa.

In September 2005, the group sued on behalf of Wal-Mart supplier sweatshop workers in China, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nicaragua and Swaziland. The suit says the workers were denied minimum wages, forced to work overtime without compensation, and were denied legally mandated health care.

And in 2001, 11 Indonesian villagers sued ExxonMobil in U.S. federal court alleging that the company was complicit in human rights abuses, including murder, torture and rape, committed by Indonesian security forces in the province of Aceh.

The plaintiffs maintain that ExxonMobil hired the security forces, who were members of the Indonesian military, to protect the company’s natural gas extraction facility and pipeline.

In October, a U.S. federal judge ruled that the case may proceed on District of Columbia state law claims, although he dismissed the federal claims under the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Torture Victim Protection Act.

Other prominent companies that have sued here for abuses in recent years include Unocal (Burma), Dow Chemical (India) and Coca-Cola (Colombia).