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December 30, 2005
Alien Tort Claims Act Lawsuit Alleges Slavery and Child Labor on Liberian Firestone Plantation
by William Baue
The International Labor Rights Fund calls this its strongest ATCA case yet because the evidence of
forced labor is so clear and Firestone owns and operates the plantation.
SocialFunds.com --
Liberia was founded in
Africa as the "land of the free" (as the country's name means in Latin) in 1820 by a group of freed
slaves seeking refuge from America's "peculiar institution." However, a recent development
suggests Liberia itself is home to conditions of slavery. Last month, the International Labor
Rights Fund (ILRF) filed an Alien Tort
Claims Act ( ATCA) case in US District Court in California against Bridgestone (ticker: 5108.T) alleging
"forced labor, the modern equivalent of slavery" on the Firestone Plantation in Harbel, Liberia.
 "The Plantation workers allege, among
other things, that they remain trapped by poverty and coercion on a frozen-in-time Plantation
operated by Firestone in a manner identical to how the Plantation was operated when it was first
opened by Firestone in 1926," states the lawsuit.
The million-acre plantation was established that year when Harvey
Firestone secured a 99-year lease on the land in exchange for a $5 million soft loan to help the
Liberian government repay debt to the US.
ILRF executive director Terry Collingsworth
filed the class-action suit in the name of 12 Liberian workers and their 23 children, who remain
anonymous to protect themselves from reprisal.
"I learned of the conditions at the
Firestone Plantation when a researcher from the Institute for Policy Studies, Emira Woods--who is herself
Liberian--contacted me after her trip to Liberia," Mr. Collingsworth told SocialFunds.com. "The
strengths of the case are, unfortunately, the extreme human rights violations on the
plantation--child labor is everywhere and adult forced labor is the norm."
ILRF has filed
lawsuits under ATCA against many other companies, such as Unocal (UCL) and Wal-Mart (WMT). ATCA is a
1789 law that allows non-citizens to seek legal recourse in US courts for violations of
international law (such as slavery and forced labor).
"This case is very similar to our
successful case against Unocal for forced labor in Burma--it advances the same basic ATCA issues,"
said Mr. Collingsworth, referring to the December 2004 settlement with Unocal that set a precedent
for ATCA cases. "But this case is our strongest yet, because the evidence of forced labor is so
clear and Firestone owns and operates the plantation, so it can't foist it off on some offshore,
foreign subsidiary as was the case with Unocal."
Also bolstering the case is a November
2005 CNN International interview with Dan Admonitis,
president of a Firestone subsidiary, in which he discusses workers' daily tree-tapping quota.
"Each tapper will tap about 650 trees a day where they spent perhaps a couple of minutes at
each tree," stated Mr. Admonitis.
"Six hundred and fifty trees a day, at two minutes per
tree, it's 1,300 minutes, or more than 21 hours of work a day," Femi Oke, the CNN host, pointed
out.
Dan MacDonald, director of media relations for Bridgestone-Firestone, sought to
contextualize the statement of Mr. Admonitis, pointing out that "a couple of minutes" is "a figure
of speech."
"He was not answering the question in the context of a time study--he was
being conversational in a live interview setting," Mr. MacDonald told SocialFunds.com. "It takes a
matter of seconds to tap a tree."
Mr. MacDonald explained that the workers tap the trees
in the morning and then return in the afternoon to collect the latex, meaning they must visit each
of the 650 trees twice.
"Most tappers work a seven to eight hour day," Mr. MacDonald said.
"The daily quota is enough for a living wage."
An eight hour day has 480 minutes in which
to visit 650 trees twice, in addition to other required tasks such as cleaning the taps, applying
pesticides and fertilizers to the trees, and carrying 75-pound buckets of latex to collection
points up to a mile away--all for $3.19 a day. The lawsuit (which contends that the current
650-tree daily quota "is not true" and places the real number much higher) notes that conditions
have actually deteriorated since 1926, citing a 1956 study reporting a daily quota of 250-300 trees
and a 1979 daily quota of 400-500 trees.
"With no technological increases and yet a quota
two to four times higher than previous reports, the system today requires that each tapper, to meet
his daily quota, find one or more unpaid 'helpers,'" the suit states. "Of course the only helpers
available under those terms are the tappers' own children."
"The overseers and supervisors
at the Firestone Plantation not only know this, they encourage and require it," it adds. "Perhaps
in anticipation of this lawsuit, in early September 2005, the Firestone Plantation issued a
directive that child labor will no longer be permitted on the Plantation."
Mr. MacDonald
rebutted this claim.
"We've had a policy in place for many years against child
labor--there are strict guidelines forbidding the use of children as laborers," he said. "We did
put out a policy directive because we wanted to reiterate and reaffirm the policy that is in place
because we want people to know exactly what the guidelines and expectations are."
Mr.
Collingsworth, who expects the company to formally respond in court within two weeks, sums up his
opinion of the case succinctly.
"This case shows, in the age of public relations, codes of
conduct, and 'socially responsible' business, what a major multinational will do if it can get away
with it," he said.
©
SRI World Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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