Then the law needs to change.
It's unconscionable for this to be happening. You make the buyers of that cobalt start caring, you'll make the producers of that cobalt start caring.
Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt
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Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt
#32Aside from the obvious issue that the tech giants do not directly employee these children (E.G they are employed by a supplier), what other issues come to mind?
Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt
#33There's a mining-friendly city in Ontario literally named Cobalt where there are believed to be large deposits of the mineral. Let's not pretend these companies don't have any other option than to go through DRC for their supply.
Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt
#34Regarding the legal merits of the case, I notice that don't see any coverage of a proposed theory of liability in the article. The lawsuit text is more informative, pointing at a bunch of sections of US Code about forced labor, trafficking, and sale into voluntary servitude — for instance, 18 U.S. Code § 1589 which notes, "(b) Whoever knowingly benefits, financially or by receiving anything of value, from participati…
A quick search shows that past lawsuits against Nestle and other companies for child labor in their supply chain listed consumers as the plaintiffs claiming damage from false advertising and non -disclosure [1]. These cases have ended up being dismissed.
The difference is that in this case the children and their families are the actual plaintiffs which presumably changes the legal merits. I still suspect that this case will also be dismissed.
I think the point is that these lawsuits are intended to raise public awareness of the issue which will ideally put pressure the companies being sued to institute voluntary policing of their supply chain. Nestle, for example, has done a lot over the last decade to eliminate child labor in their supply chain.
(Edit) It looks like there is a supreme Court precedent related to the Nestle case that held that child/family plaintiffs did have standing to sue for child labor in the supply chain [2]
[1] https://www.confectionerynews.com/Article/2018/02/13/Nestle-...
[2] https://news.yahoo.com/u-supreme-court-gives-boost-child-sla...
Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt
#35Congo produces 2/3rds of the worlds Cobalt. It really doesn't matter if Apple, Microsoft, Dell, Tesla and Google admit they used child labour.... They have. Instead of levelling skepticism at the lawsuit, why not level skepticism at the companies with a collective market cap of ~$2 trillion? Doesn't that seem more constructive? There's a real failure of imagination in these comments. Working conditions can and have b…
30% of 2016's cobalt consumption is 34800 tonnes. Most cobalt is used in alloys[0], and it is mathematically impossible that each of five companies uses more than a third of the supply in any case.
In other words, it's quite possible that any, or even all, of those companies don't use DRC cobalt. I'll grant you that it's unlikely, particularly in Tesla's case, given how many batteries they produce.
Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt
#36Then the law needs to change. It's unconscionable for this to be happening. You make the buyers of that cobalt start caring, you'll make the producers of that cobalt start caring.
I think you got downvoted because people like Teslas more than they care about African children.
Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt
#37The structural issue is abstraction caused by complicated supply chains. The public interface is what the consumer can easily see about the product like the user experience, branding, and the final purchase price, but it's supported by lots of hidden infrastructure associated the manufacture of every part embedded into the product, along with any services provided supporting the user experience.
Labeling laws are one way to try to make the hidden details of implementation public at the cost of more complex decision-making for consumers. Sometimes large companies can police the supply chain themselves, so that from a consumer perspective, avoiding exploitation becomes part of the brand.
A carbon tax attempts to bundle climate change costs into prices without changing the public API at all. This seems like the most thorough way to make sure every buyer at all levels of the supply chain takes this environmental cost into account in their decision-making, whether they are specifically thinking about it or not.
So it seems the best way to avoid this issue would be for cobalt based on child labor to be unavailable for purchase and a second-best way would be to make sure it's more expensive so that buyers within the supply chain will automatically avoid that dependency.
When we get to the point where consumers need to step in and do the decision-making because nobody else will then this is probably the most inefficient way to do it, but it seems the supply chain won't do it unless they are pushed into it?
Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Insensitive or not, both statements can be true at the same time. I.e. Africa is plagued by bad leadership and corruption, and the west is more than happy to take advantage of the situation.
Africa is still colonized, so this idea that they picked "bad leaders" is comical. I would expect the owner of Glencore have more say in the next leader in some of these countries than the actual population. Time to stop blaming the victims of crimes Europeans have been committing for 2-3+ centuries? now...
Upvoted.
You'll not find many on here with an ounce of historical, social or political understanding.
Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Insensitive or not, both statements can be true at the same time. I.e. Africa is plagued by bad leadership and corruption, and the west is more than happy to take advantage of the situation.
Africa is still colonized, so this idea that they picked "bad leaders" is comical. I would expect the owner of Glencore have more say in the next leader in some of these countries than the actual population. Time to stop blaming the victims of crimes Europeans have been committing for 2-3+ centuries? now...
exactly!
colonial powers only pulled out of africa once they figured out how to continue extracting and exploiting without the overheads of having to also administer their former colonies
Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Insensitive or not, both statements can be true at the same time. I.e. Africa is plagued by bad leadership and corruption, and the west is more than happy to take advantage of the situation.
In a lot of cases Africa's bad leadership is a direct result of the west's former colonial efforts there. Congo in particular suffered at the hands of Belgium. So this sentiment is incomplete.
Nooo don't blame people who look like me!
(upvoted).