Nicole C. Lee, Executive Director, TransAfrica Forum

Americans.  We love our cars.  Different makes and models, most of us don’t even care where and how they are made.  The parts and the tires are of no consequence to us, nor are the livelihoods of those tasked with their production.  Where tires are concerned, Bridgestone Firestone is one of the top producers, a name that sponsors sporting events and encourages Girl Scout troops.  What is not promoted is the fact that Firestone has kept the cost of producing tires low through an organized and intentional system of exploitation in the African country of Liberia.

When the U.S. Firestone company came to Liberia, they must have been overwhelmed by the agricultural richness.  What they found there was millions of acres of rubber trees that could be tapped in order to use the millions of barrels of liquid rubber to create tires.

In 1926, the government of Liberia signed a concession with Firestone to lease one million acres of land for 99 years—at 6 cents per acre.  Many Liberians, of course, already lived within these one million acres.  They became serfs -- convenient slaves to work the land that Firestone calls the “Firestone Plantation”.

Today, the “Firestone Plantation” has everything you would expect: Exploitation, child labor and environmental degradation. The workers must tap the trees to extract the rubber latex and then transport the 70 pound buckets to the factory, a distance which could be several miles.  Each “tapper” must meet a virtually impossible daily quota or risk their wages being cut. In order to meet the quota, wives and children are forced to work alongside the men. There are no modern conveniences on the plantation: the workers use hand cranks, and if they are lucky, there may be the occasional wheelbarrow.  There are no goggles or masks.  Workers and their families are forced to breathe in pesticides both at work and at home.  Local water holes and rives are polluted by the toxic sludge dumped out of the same weighing station to which tappers must walk for miles to dump the liquid rubber.  The plantation affects the lives of these Liberians, both in the short term and in the long term.

Firestone was barely impacted by the bloody genocidal wars that rocked Liberia in 1989 and 2003. The “plantation” continued to function basically as it did in 1926. The workers were trapped in a medieval nightmare that never ended even as the world moved on.

Then something amazing happened.

Workers began to advocate for their rights.  Families began to organize.  Workers demanded a dignified life with fair wages and working conditions.  Sure, a union existed, but it was management run -- more concerned about the interests of Firestone than of the workers.  The workers needed a functioning union.

Then, a confluence of events occurred. In 2006, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was elected president of Liberia.  Likely allies across the Atlantic took notice and offered aid.  Principally, Leo Gerard and Fred Redman of the United Steelworkers offered support to the group of Liberian workers struggling to form a democratic union.

The fortuitous confluence of events worked.  In 2007, the union held the first free and fair elections in history of the plantation.  As you would expect, Firestone initially refused to recognize the union.  Having had the governmental structures in Liberia on their side for so many years, Bridgestone Firestone must have believed they could railroad through the justice system and kill the idea of the union.  But a little democracy can do wondrous things.  After six months and a strike by the workers, the Supreme Court of Liberia upheld the union’s right to represent the workers.  As we see the journey taken from so little, the workers have made truly tremendous strides.

Now the next phase of this fight begins.  Most likely, Firestone will fight every benefit, every wage increase the union demands. But the workers will also continue to fight.

Nicole C. Lee is the Executive Director of TransAfrica Forum