Firestone Natural Rubber Company

Creation and early history

During the 1920s, the United States access to rubber was restricted by the European colonial powers (Britain and the Netherlands), which held a monopoly in rubber production. Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce, considered rubber a vital resource due to its usage for car tires and began working with American rubber companies in order to find a rubber source that was controlled by US interests. Part of a Department of Commerce-subsidised worldwide search for a place for rubber plantations, rubber magnate Harvey Samuel Firestone sent experts to Liberia in December 1923 to do a soil survey.

In 1926, the Liberian government granted Firestone a 99-year lease for a million acres (to be chosen by the company wherever in Liberia) at a price of 6 cents per acre, Firestone thus created the world's largest rubber plantation. Firestone also provided a $5 million loan at a 7% interest rate to the government to pay the foreign debts it had and to build a harbour needed by Firestone. The loan was given in exchange for complete authority over the government's revenues until the loan was paid.

The loan took a larger and larger portion of the Liberian government's incomes: it grew from 20% of the total revenue of Liberia in 1929, to 32% in 1930, to 54.9% in 1931 and nearly the whole revenue in 1932. An estimation made by a member of the American Legation in Liberia said that Liberia really paid a 17% interest rate for the loan.

During the Great Depression, as rubber price fell, Firestone stopped its development of the plantation (using just 50,000 acres and cutting wages in half), and, depriving the Liberian government of tax incomes, the government missed a payment to the loans to the company. Firestone asked the US government to send a warship to Monrovia to enforce the debt payment, but President Franklin Delano Roosevelt rejected the "gunboat diplomacy". The loans to the company were finally paid in 1952.

During the civil wars

As rubber demand went down during the 1980s, Firestone dismissed a number of 5000 workers, leading to the local antipathy to the company. On June 6, 1990, during the First Liberian Civil War, the resistance group National Patriotic Front of Liberia took over the Firestone plantation and evacuated US personnel. The exact nature of Firestone's activities in the plantation between 1990 and 1997 is unclear, the government's official stance was that they were able to take it back within a few months, while media reports say that it was not operational until late 1994.

In 1997, after the violence was over, the company restarted the operations, at first at a third of capacity, with 3000 workers. The company soon faced a number of violent protests, as its employees wanted better working conditions, better pay and resettlement benefits. By October 2008, it was operating at half the capacity, withholding further investments until the government finally agreed to give the company a lenient tax status.

Current operations

In 2005, the Firestone Company and the Liberian government signed a new 37-year deal raising the lease to 50 cents per acre.

Labor controversy

The workers accuse the company of serious labor abuses, including exploitative child labor, which they claim amount to modern-day slavery. Workers specifically claim that Firestone's high daily quotas force them to employ their own children, subjecting them to grueling and dangerous work conditions. In response to the claims, the president of Firestone Natural Rubber told a CNN interviewer that "each tapper will tap about 650 trees a day, where they spend perhaps a couple of minutes at each tree." As the network pointed out, this would add up to more than 21 hours of work per day.

In May 2006, the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) released a report detailing the state of human rights on Liberia's rubber plantations. According to the report, Firestone managers in Liberia admitted that the company does not effectively monitor its own policy prohibiting child labor. UNMIL found that several factors contribute to the occurrence of child labor on Firestone plantations: pressure to meet company quotas, incentive to support the family financially, and lack of access to basic education.

Alien Tort Claims Act

In November 2005, the International Labor Rights Fund, representing "tappers" (workers who extract latex from rubber trees) on the Liberian plantation, filed an Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) case in US District Court in California against Bridgestone (parent company owning Firestone), alleging "forced labor, the modern equivalent of slavery", on the Firestone Plantation in Harbel, Liberia.

The lawsuit stated:

Firestone rejected these allegations, stating that the corporation has provided employment and pensions to thousands of Liberians as well as healthcare. The company also provides education and training opportunities to employees and their children.

In reply to the charge of exploitative child labor, Management of the plantation claims that workers are bringing their own children to work to assist them and that this is not endorsed by the plantation management.

Workers claim that management's high daily quotas force them to employ their own children as their only means of meeting quotas.

Even though Liberia does have child labor laws and Firestone has banned children from tapping trees, workers say the ban is not enforced. The workers say the only way they can complete their daily quota is to bring their children along.

Firestone management says if children are found helping their parents, the employees are cancelled, and if necessary, disciplined. "We have very strict policies about our child labor. We do not hire anybody under 18 years of age, and we discourage parents from bringing their children to the fields with them ."

Firestone requested to transfer the case to Indianapolis, Indiana, from California and this request was granted in April 2006.

UN report

In May 2006, the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) released a report: "Human Rights in Liberia’s Rubber Plantations: Tapping into the Future".

According to the report, Firestone managers in Liberia admitted that the company does not effectively monitor its own policy prohibiting child labor. UNMIL found that several factors contribute to the occurrence of child labor on Firestone plantations: pressure to meet company quotas, incentive to support the family financially, and lack of access to basic education. The report also noted that workers' housing provided by Firestone has not been renovated since the houses were constructed in the 1920s and 1930s.

In response to the accusations of child labor and poor housing in the UN report, Dan Adomitis, President of Firestone Natural Rubber Company Liberia, stated: