Children work in Congolese mines where cobalt is extracted for smartphones
news.sky.com
news.sky.com
I worked all my young life, in Iowa, on a farm. One of the most dangerous jobs in America according to the actuarials. No lasting damage to me, though not all my cohort actually survived unscathed into adulthood. Heck, half my fathers' generation had nicknames like 'lefty' and 'stub'.
Should working children on farms in Iowa be banned? Had it happened when I was young, half the family farms would have gone under.
Its not some academic third-world issue. You ate that food we produced. And at the time, it wasn't going to be produced any other way.
1. It's important to call out injustice and fight for what we can improve in our own communities, but it's also important to remember that this is the day to day reality for many people. We should reflect on our lives every so often and feel lucky, because it's healthy if for no other reason.
2. When we measure value and progress using dollars and technology, and we only pay attention to the things in front of us, there is collateral damage. If you're on a blind mission to make computers affordable to everyone, or to compete with hydrocarbon and fission energy on price, this is one effect.
> Should working children on farms in Iowa be banned? Had it happened when I was young, half the family farms would have gone under.
probably yes. If you can't support a business without relying on child labour, it's not much of a business. I'm guessing this was around 20-40 years ago, during which time food production boomed across america and food prices plummeted. So yes, the food would have been produced regardless, you and your peers would have had more time to spend on education and the net personal and economic benefits would have been positive.
If you took the children out of the mines the cobalt would still get mined. The owners would find technology and process efficiencies to stay price competitive, if those don't exist then the price of mobile phones should go up.
These parents are no different to those in developed countries and would want what's best for their children, if they had the choice - so that safety net would get added.
You talked about the mine owners and the price of phones, but what about the children and their families? What would they have to do?
If there's no schools then there's not enough tax being drawn from the mine, so tax the mine (or cobalt exports). You do that until the point smartphones become unaffordable (which we are really, really far off).
Except that's not what happens because it's not in the West's interest and there's enough influence over dictators etc. to keep it that way.
What's your point, unless you were actually agreeing with the parent?
If you want to try to solve the problem through some random intervention you need to take a step back and fix whatever is preventing them from going to school, not arbitrarily taking away their jobs and then patting yourself on the back for a problem solved.
The ultimate reason it doesn't happen is because people in the west don't want to pay more for their smartphone (they are not to blame though, as they won't see this picture, our politicians, corporations and planners are the groups that maintain this picture deliberately).
If only there were an alternative to this inevitable, natural, inexorable economic process. Too bad there isn't.
I think you drastically underestimate the value of work as it related to self actualization, determination and long term success as an adult.
Fortunately, we have a bit of an A/B test going on in America right now - rural youth in many parts of the country have no meaningful work and no home-economic structure into which to pour their energy and time. News headlines lead me to believe this is going poorly:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/06/us/opioid-crisis-epidemic...
I'm sorry, but did you just compare working on a farm in Iowa to being a child slave in a war zone? What's happening in the Congo is globalization at it's worst. Millions have been slaughtered in that nation in recent years and you say it's "a hard world." That takes a lot of nerve, man.
Farm work isn't mining. Farm work isn't as toxic as mining. And I highly doubt these kids are getting an education.
> You don't solve child-labor by simply firing the children.
But that's what we did in the western world. In the US we simply passed laws making child factory/mining/etc labor illegal. Now we did this only because we were running out of jobs for adults and kicking out the kids opened up jobs for adults, but it's something that is doable at a government level.
Whether the government in congo is able to do that, whether the poverty level allows that and whether they have elementary schools to absorb unemployeed kids is another matter.
It's hard to defend child mining. It's not working on a family farm.
Yes, especially if they're working on tobacco farms.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27350413
https://www.hrw.org/video-photos/photo-essay/2015/12/08/teen...
https://www.hrw.org/video-photos/video/2015/12/08/teens-toba...
For one point of view, you may want to read "Why Cobalt Is Not a Conflict Mineral": https://agmetalminer.com/2011/06/06/why-cobalt-is-not-a-conf...
The story has a lot of parallels to the story of the Harkin Bill. For those that don't know, I've paraphrased the Wikipedia article below:
"Based on the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics Labor Force Survey estimated there were about 5.7 million 10- to 14-year-old children engaged in Child labour in Bangladesh. This number may have been as high as 15 million children."
... "In 1993 employers in Bangladesh' ready-made garment (RMG) industry dismissed 50,000 children (c. 75 percent of child workers in the textile industry) out of fear of economic reprisals of the imminent passage of the Child Labor Deterrence Act"
... "The act which banned "importation to the United States of products which are manufactured or mined in whole or in part by children" would have resulted in the loss of lucrative American contracts. Its impact on Bangladesh's economy would have been significant as the export-oriented ready-made garment industry represents most of the country's exports."
... "UNICEF sent a team of investigators into Bangladesh to learn what came of the children who were dismissed from their factory jobs. UNICEF's 1997 State of the World's Children report confirmed that most of the children found themselves in much more deplorable situations, such as crushing stones, scavenging through trash dumps, and begging on the streets. Many of the girls eventually ended up in prostitution."
I highly recommend everyone read the full Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Labor_Deterrence_Act
- - - -
For anyone who skipped to the bottom for a TL;DR: Bangladesh had millions of child laborers, US Senator Harkin proposed a bill that would ban importing products made with child labor, and Bangladesh's garment industry (which was most of the country's exports) fired 75% of the children. As a result most children found worse work: crushing stones, scavenging trash, and prostitution.
You cannot escape responsibility of the bad consequences of your actions, even if you say the consequences are "unwanted", not what you intended. Particularly if you know those consequences were going to happen.
"The misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all."
- economist Joan Robinson, 1962
> Then the problem lies with the employers, the
> government, the system.
You can do what the Chinese did and essentially print money to pay people for public works jobs which then enables more non-subsidized economic activity, but that boot strapping is difficult and needs you to start with a stable government base.
> they have essentially removed from the economy jobs for those children.
Jobs for those children, but not jobs from the economy, period. It's not like the demand for garments just dissipated into thin air with that legislation. The work is still there, and Bangladesh has a surfeit of labour.
It shouldn't be about the stuff, it should be about the children. The idea that you'd rather have children in worse conditions as long as they're not making stuff for you seems... weird to say the least.
> Jobs for those children, but not jobs from the economy, period. It's not like the demand for garments just dissipated into thin air with that legislation. The work is still there, and Bangladesh has a surfeit of labour.
Presumably other workers demand higher wages (reducing the country's competitiveness) and/or are less good at the jobs. Otherwise they'd already have been hired ahead of the children.
Maybe it would be better to allow products made with child labor, so long as the children are provided with above-average education in return. I guess that would make children too expensive and companies would switch to adults anyway.
The best possible improvement would probably be to provide children with food, shelter and education free of charge, so they don't have to work at all. Unfortunately, very few people are actually willing to pay for that.
Yes, they do. And regulations can control that. Regulations around building codes stop people from building shanties everywhere. Regulations around new vehicle safety means people can't put new, unsafe vehicles on the road.
What makes you think that the garment industry is any different? "Oh, I have to pay $7 for this T-shirt instead of $6? In that case, I'm going to import my own from overseas!". Nonsense. It is insane, the level to which people in this thread are defending gruelling child labour as some sort of unavoidable consequence of the supply chain.
It seems quite normal to me. I'd rather not point out the examples I'm thinking of, but I can come up with a number which I'm willing to be people would be against despite being better overall for the children involved, at least in terms of money earned per harm done, actually quantifying harm in a way that one can easily compare is itself a touchy issue. Even then money is more a generic metric itself, because there are many non-monetary things that one can earn, but which usually can be given a monetary value.
Sorry but: fuck that.
If a country is competitive because it's essentially engaging in slavery you just increase pressure, up to blockade and sanctions. That is, until they start taxing business enough to pay for proper public schooling, housing and sanitation.
This race to the bottom bullshit has got to stop.
Unfortunately, providing an incomplete or imperfect solution to a problem automatically makes everyone blame you for that problem, even when you provably helped fix it[0]. Anyone who helps fix the problem of child labour by slowly improving working conditions or by brokering a compromise will be blamed for anything and everything remotely connected to it.
[0] https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...
What happened was _the children became prostitutes_ because they needed money. Some of the children that did NOT become prostitutes got jobs literally crushing up rocks, which leads to large particle inhalation that damages your lungs beyond belief.
How is that preferable to having them work in a sweatshop?
Bangladesh does not _have_ the money, anywhere, to pay for "proper public schooling, housing, and sanitation". There is no money anywhere _to_ tax. They are one of the poorest countries in the world with an income per capita of less than one thousand dollars.
I've got a fun story for you. The European Union recently introduced a set of regulations that make shipbreaking facilities in the EU face a large number of environmental and labor regulations. Bangladesh said "hey, cheap steel!" and scaled up its shipbreaking operations. The majority of Bangladesh's steel now comes from poorly paid laborers that disassemble large ships with a cutting torch and their hands, with no safety gear or regard for the environment. Net effect of the regulation: more pollution, more workers in unsafe conditions worldwide. There's a word for this: outsourcing. The EU neatly outsourced its problems to Bangladesh. Nice!
Some policy problems aren't some kind of global conspiracy by the 1%, they're actual hard problems to solve. This is a bipartisan issue in that neither side, no matter their particular slant, has an idea of how to solve the problem. If you stop the manufacturers you force children into prostitution. If you let them continue you're complicit in child slavery.
By the way, you can't just blockade or sanction a country like Bangladesh out of nowhere. First of all, a lot countries (small, densely populated countries in Asia) rely on access to Bangladesh's ports, so we'd be inadvertently sanctioning those countries as well. Second of all, you probably don't know how big it is. Bangladesh's population, 160 million, is bigger than Spain, Canada, Australia, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, Israel, Denmark, Finland, and Norway - combined. You're sanctioning all those people for something that most of them aren't involved in and can't change? And you want them to pay for "proper public schooling, housing and education" for all those people on a total GDP of under 200 billion dollars? For contrast, the Netherlands has a GDP of around 800 billion dollars.
Please reconsider your position.
[0]: Spain (46MM), Canada (36), Australia (24), Belgium (11), Greece (10), Sweden (10), Israel (8), Denmark (5), Finland (5) and Norway (5).
What businesses? You just killed any business that isn't paying a comfortable living. In a place like the Congo, what makes you think any are left?
It doesn't matter to the Congolese child whether their step down from mining to something worse is morally satisfying to you because it also hurts a 1%er. Banning someone's best option, no matter how shitty, makes them worse off.
I doubt if anyone economically literate was surprised by this.
1 and 2 seems good reason to not classify it as "conflict mineral" but there should be other laws that would force US compagnies to look at wether they are financing child labor or not.
Or that people are using 900$ phones to explain that those children should be happy to have a 1p/day job.
Free market surely doesn't apply to starving 7 years old. What are the alternative they know about? Who brought them to the mine? What the difference between that and slavery? Is slavery allowed because "they could end up as prostitute"?
As Congo owns a big proportion of Cobalt they should be able to hire "adults" to do the work and pay them more. Given they have any incentive to do so, which they currently don't.
http://projectcensored.org/19-american-companies-exploit-the...
> Historically, the U.S. government identified sources of materials in Third World countries, and then encouraged U.S. corporations to invest in and facilitate their production. Dating back to the mid-1960s, the U.S. government literally installed the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko, which gave U.S. corporations access to the Congo’s minerals for more than 30 years. However, over the years Mobutu began to limit access by Western corporations, and to control the distribution of resources. In 1998, U.S. military-trained leaders of Rwanda and Uganda invaded the mineral-rich areas of the Congo. The invaders installed illegal colonial-style governments which continue to receive millions of dollars in arms and military training from the United States. Our government and a $5 million Citibank loan maintains the rebel presence in the Congo. Their control of mineral rich areas allows western corporations, such as American Mineral Fields, to illegally mine. Rwandan and Ugandan control over this area is beneficial for both governments and for the corporations that continue to exploit the Congo’s natural wealth.
The US dictators, banks, corporations and citizens are ruling, financing, lobbying and voting for this regardless. To solve the problem each of these need their incentives aligned (e.g. give dicators a better deal for not allowing this, limit profitability of cobalt mining to the banks, force coprorations to declare "cruelty free", write articles like this one to influence citizens to vote for favourable policies).
The status quo of failed states (corruption, violence, no infrastructure) is hard to change. What can you do today that will solve everything in 10 years? Whats the magic solution?
No one really seems to be implementing any such functioning top down plan.
But there are certain inter-dependencies in our complex world, one of which is that free trade enables child labor. Child labor is bad but in the context of a failed state that represents an even worse environment then child labor it seems more acceptable (the child has to work, but at least it dosent die of hunger). So its really bad but no one is offering a better solution. Everyone is just complaining and pointing fingers at others.
[1] http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1111767_propaganda-video...
[2] https://youtu.be/nM1WiGkdkVA
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/c...
The headline reference to smartphones made me chuckle. Sure, they're the big thing right at this moment, but if electric cars take off they way they look like they could, their cobalt use will massively eclipse that of our dinky little pocket computers.
From what I understand, there is a major supply bottleneck here obstructing the path to exponentially increasing our electric transportation, worse than with the more commonly discussed lithium. Any story about sourcing materials used in batteries should at least be looking at the impact of producing an additional 500 million+ pounds of them a year (and that's just to support Tesla's current projections).
[Not trying to smear EVs by the way, I think they're great and I want one, just pointing out that there are still significant logistical issues to consider.]
People want to be believe so badly we can reach sustainability and keep consuming more and more.
The consumers buying things are solely to blame, even if ignorant of the reality since willful ignorance is a thing. If there is any outrage it should be at those who buy these phones and let this happen. Every other part of this scheme is just a cog in the machine, being turned by the complicit consumer.
You should also be careful to stick your hand into something you don’t truly understand, and consider the motivation and implication. You may want it to be stopped to satiafy your own outrage, but they may want it to continue for survival.
In a really neat trial, they went to factory owners and randomized the acceptance for job applicants, tracking the outcomes of people who found employment elsewhere. Chris originally made his name studying the lives of former child soldiers in Uganda. Recommend his mostly-professional twitter feed [1]
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/27/opinion/do-sweatshops-lif... [1] https://twitter.com/cblatts
Contrary to other brands, they can actually try to fix it because they can also admit that this is an issue with their first two phones: because they're an awareness campaign as well, because they're documenting what issues they encounter and why it's so difficult, and because they want to be the trailblazer that figures out how to improve this situation, so other brands can copy their model.
Dorsen is threatened with a beating as he works in heavy rain
It's almost a cliche. There may be a horrible injustice going on here, and if so it really deserves better reporting. Give me some numbers, some sense of scale. Is this a widespread problem?
Choice quotes: "Congo continued to be the world's leading source of mined cobalt, supplying more than one-half of world cobalt mine production... World cobalt consumption is driven mainly by strong growth in the rechargeable battery and aerospace industries... China was the world's leading consumer of cobalt, with nearly 80% of its consumption being used by the rechargeable battery industry."
So those basic facts are correct. Data on working condition of Congolese cobalt mine is much harder to get. On the other hand, it could have been misleading for following reasons, say, only small amount of cobalt is produced in Congo, or only small amount of cobalt is used for high-tech batteries. But this time, both are not the case.
People are different in what makes them care.
You're assuming they are paid to begin with, there is plenty of child-slavery in Africa. Some of these kids are sold by relatives. They aren't paid at all since the relative has already been paid.
The people work horrendous hours for a tiny amount of money - maybe 50 cents per day. At the end of the day they need to pay for food (no time to grow it) and pay for people to do things like make their shelter, clothes and transport (no time to do it for themselves). And so they have zero money left. They also work in horrible conditions and have a life expectancy of ~40.
In many countries (Cameroon, Bolivia, Ivory Coast, Senegal, etc. etc.) I have seen where this crosses a line, and the locals simply choose not to work and just go back to growing their own food etc. Often they are happier and better off.
Yes, this forces the wages to go up a tiny fraction, but in reality it is almost nothing, because there are always more naive country-folk coming in who think (as you do) "having a job is great" and they will "provide for their families" etc. By the time they figure out the whole thing is a terrible scam and quit, they already live in a slum in the city and can't go back. They are trapped. They probably even owe the mine some money or live in housing provided by the mine, so they are literally owned.
Your idealized view of Capitalism is plain wrong. It does not happen like that in countries that do not have strict labor laws. (and even then, I would argue that many in the USA are working-slaves)
Read Grapes of Wrath if you have not, it does a fantastic job of illustrating how people become trapped in extremely low-paying jobs with little to no choice.
However, you stand by your original statement that you are glad they have a job.
Color me confused.
I can tell you what I have seen, not anything at all imagined.
I have seen hundreds of people quit their jobs in third world mines and other "western owned slave labor". So I can tell you first hand exactly the outcome that happens.
I have seen those people go back to growing their own food, making and washing their own clothes, building their own houses etc. They go back to being members of their communities. They have massively more food and water than they need, and quickly have a lot of social time. Now they have time to spend with their family and friends. They don't have much money, so often they won't own a car, but they have plenty of food and water and shelter and family time.
Their basic needs are met, and they have a good life.
Actually, it virtually all of the 15 countries I have been to in West Africa I have met hundreds and hundreds (and seen thousands) of people that have massively more leisure time than anyone I know in the Western World, and on the whole I would say people are happier. Certainly they have no stress, no timelines and don't answer to any boss. They have no alarms, and don't care what time it is on any given day (or what day it is).
This is not hollywood. This is not the world CNN tells you it is. Child soldiers and prostitution are not the only option, and in my experience in over 30 undeveloped countries, they are extremely rare.
You say that people who stop doing this back-breaking, underpaid work end up better off. If that's the case, why are people still staying on the shitty job? Why aren't they making what looks like a no-brainer decision from our viewpoint?
Of course, the lure of "lots of money" is a strong one, and they will work for years and years thinking one day they will have the lucky break that will make the difference and pull them out of poverty. (side note: sound familiar? Look around you)
Like I said, read grapes of wrath to see an excellent account of how people head towards this "working dream" only to become disgustingly trapped working as slave labor, continually going backwards even though they work harder and harder. When they are unable they are kicked out to die and replaced.
And finally, many people do quit and attempt to get away from it all, but there is an endless stream of naive newcomers to continually staff the mine. (again, see this clearly shown in grapes of wrath)
Thanks for the explanation. Those may not be good reasons, but they're understandable reasons that help solve the puzzle for me.
For the record I did not vote for Trump and referencing the president of the US is entirely off topic.
About 109 years ago, my grandfather was a twelve-year-old boy and as all boys at that time and in his social class did, he went to work in the forest, logging trees with his father and brothers. Ours was not the poorest of families, but everyone had to work hard to make a living, and that meant also children.
A pile of logs came loose and rolled on his knee, crushing it. My folks were so well-off people in such a well-off area that they actually took the boy to a doctor - not everyone would have been able to do that - and the doctor said that his knee might never recover and he couldn't work in the forest.
"What use do I have for such a boy?" was my great-grandfather's reaction, in a tone of agitation and disbelief.
No tears for the boy, no expression of sympathy for the immense pain. It was simply the grief of losing labour, a pair of hands and feet that could work for the family, a family which had for generations made a living in subsistence farming but now could work the forests for the emerging paper and sawmill industries. He had no use for a boy that couldn't work.
That might sound totally heartless today, but those days, it was the natural reaction. A kid who couldn't contribute, e.g. in logging trees, was just a useless mouth to feed. My grandfather's knee mended eventually well enough for him to work, and he died of tuberculosis at the age of 56, a dozen years before I was born.
And our family was not at all the poorest of families; they lived in a nation that was at that time ahead in poverty reduction of where much of India, Bangladesh of Congo is now: there was even a new, universal school system! And there were those industries that were exploiting child labour.
How the world has changed. My own father still worked the forest with a horse; in between he went to a world war and then again worked the forest with a leg that was shot to pieces and did not mend well. His hands were rough with calluses. But mine are soft. Beside school I got a job at cemetery digging graves, earned money to buy a computer, became a software engineer. This is easy life.
But this is only possible because my grandfather was able to work as a child labourer.
Today, when I go to poor places in the world (I don't do it so often but a week ago I was in Soweto, not the worst place in Africa though much different from wealthy and egalitarian Northern Europe) I see kids who do hard work cleaning up the streets etc. What I want them to have is a possibility to go to school; I don't want to deny them the possibility to do work and help the family to earn a living.
It's hard to figure whether this comment is sarcastic or just ignorant of the whole situation with child exploitation in Africa.
Where I'm sitting now - tapping on an iPhone btw, yes the hypocrisy of it all is deafening - it's a beautiful day and a couple just sat at a bar with their baby lieing in a pram.
Nobody here around me is digging heavy metal ridden rock win their bare hands.
That aside, why not ensure better regulations and ways on the mines, if cobalt is only readily available in large amounts in the Congo and phones being one of the more profitable products, you are only exploiting the local peoples.
I understand it would have a huge impact on supply chains and manufacturing but the alternative is losing lives, I remember this same debate from years ago about people losing lives for phones in Congolese mines and am somewhat amazed that its literally the same issues.
Cobalt is available in other countries (US, Mexico, among others) but starting up a mine is not cheap and takes years --I think Idaho has/had one?. We could mine more and then those people would lose the little they have.
As someone else said, their best bet as a society is to follow in China's footsteps to ramp up quickly --though note they have paid a pretty heavy price (pollution). Still, on the whole, I don't think it can be argued sincerely that they have not come out way ahead.
When the alternative is starving to death a very low wage that essentially only gives you enough to not die becomes quite attractive. That doesn't mean it's fair, reasonable or right.
This. If this is the alternative how is the solution stop buying cobalt from them? So basically, cos we want to feel morally superior these people will have to alternatively starve to death cos there is not much else going on in that part of the world to make money on... ? :/
While I am sadden by stories like this, unfortunately I think the solution requires complete overhaul of the environment they are in not just running the mine out of business. They need another alternative. But this cannot be changed by the outsiders :(
And there are similar stories, if not worse, with tobacco industry in Africa, but I assume it is not as attractive to journalists as "mining" is seen more like a slave job. (Kids basically pick and sort tobacco leaves with no protection which makes them absorb dangerous amounts of nicotine)
But the solution is not to stop smoking but to give them alternative. The only reason we don't have child labor in western countries is that we have alternative means of getting food for which we, thank god, don't need to utilize children.
(One good alternative I've seen is tea plantations, partially cos tea doesn't have harmful chemical for people so they need to invest less in protective gear for example)
First of all, just all children in Africa are "working" in the sense that they are fetching water every day from wells and water sources, often on their heads, as much as they can carry, but not too much. Without water, no child can wash their bodies, and no food can be cooked. Children work in any area of life helping adults to push vegetables, sort things, and anything where a child can be helpful.
They are not spoiled and learn that way how to contribute to family. There is nothing wrong with it. It is not "work", and children are not "paid" moneys, they are simply helping their parents.
There is really nothing wrong with helping.
The environment in such mining areas is such that families usually have no work at all. Suddenly somebody is opening a mine, and it becomes matter of speed to collect whatever is representing a resource, to exchange such resource for better life.
Sometimes work is so easy such as separating various stones from other stones.
When parents know that there are some dangerous chemicals, they would not involve their children. Congolese people are not that dumb how story wants to show it.
Children are helping in such activities that are appropriate for them. Nobody is forcing them, and there are schools, those who need to go to school, usually go.
Everywhere in Europe, before European development, before some 100 years, children were helping parents in the same way.
Now with that nice life, and all development that happened in the meantime, it is easy to point out fingers "look you are employing children", but that is not quite correct description. Problem is larger than "children labor", and I do not see it as "labor", I see that as children helping parents. I have never seen a forceful parent or "employee" who is forcing children to work.
Sensationalism makes it appear so.
To understand really situation, one need to come on place, and not just sit behind a modern computer, watching pictures from Congo.
In the end, what you want? That they do not get any food, money, cloth, resources required for living?
> When parents know that there are some dangerous chemicals, they would not involve their children.
I've seen first-hand, here in a first-world country, people with engineering degrees working in manufacturing with dangerous chemicals refuse to bother putting on safety gear.
Hell, the whole OH&S industry has trouble getting employees to act safely, not just employers.
Yeah parents sure stopped their children from smoking 40 years ago!