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
#2It's about time tech giants take responsibility for the blood minerals they use.
You can save people's lives by using the Fairphone already. It's free of those.
Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt
#3I highly doubt these companies are directly hiring or managing Cobalt miners. You might as well also sue anybody who uses a computer. This is purely a publicity stunt; it will get thrown out immediately.
Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt
#4Cobalt and tantalum are truly the Achilles heel of industrial economies.
No cobalt - no lithium batteries, and no mobile gadgets
No tantalum - no high spec capacitors omnipresent in compact power supplies, thus again no high value electronics as such unless you want to put huge electrolytic caps into your smartphone.
Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt
#5>Perhaps the only tragedy greater than the criminal destruction of the environment and the lives of the people of the Congo by these companies is the fact that it would be a rounding error on their income statements to fix the problem.
Eh, I don't think giving more money to the third world mining companies is going to guarantee they're going to stop using child labor. The simplest and least risky decision for the tech companies is to simply stop buying Congolese cobalt. It's "blood diamonds" all over again.
Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt
#6I feel like this is essentially trying to sue capitalism. Of course most raw materials people get is essentially sourced from exploitation. That's just the result of buying for the cheapest cost.
People don't like seeing how the sausage gets made, like the John Oliver segment on children making clothes, if they shut this down it will just pop up again with another company...
Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt
#7I'm surprised they have a problem. The likes of GM is well known to trace their supply chain down as many levels as required to ensure this doesn't exist. GM has already faced this nightmare (I'm not sure if they were sued, or just got tired of protests) and takes care to ensure that they know who buys what from who all the way down. GM isn't a big tech buyer, but they are big enough to be worth changing your practices so you can sell to them. GM isn't the only company as well, just one that I know of from publicly available information.
Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt
#8I feel like this is essentially trying to sue capitalism. Of course most raw materials people get is essentially sourced from exploitation. That's just the result of buying for the cheapest cost. People don't like seeing how the sausage gets made, like the John Oliver segment on children making clothes, if they shut this down it will just pop up again with another company...
Most capitalists fear public relations and won't use child or slave labor anywhere in their supply chain if they can help it. When the customer might boycott you for something you stand to lose far more than gain by doing it anyway.
Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt
#9>Perhaps the only tragedy greater than the criminal destruction of the environment and the lives of the people of the Congo by these companies is the fact that it would be a rounding error on their income statements to fix the problem. Eh, I don't think giving more money to the third world mining companies is going to guarantee they're going to stop using child labor. The simplest and least risky decision for the tec…
I think the assumption is that ethical suppliers would be more expensive and that these companies have the margins to pay more.
Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt
#10Regarding 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 participation in a venture which has engaged in the providing or obtaining of labor or services by any of the means described in subsection (a), knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that the venture has engaged in the providing or obtaining of labor or services by any of such means, shall be punished as provided in subsection (d)."
But I'm not at all certain the court is willing consider the purchase of goods on the world market to be equivalent to "participation" in this venture, even if the suit asserts that "The Cobalt Supply Chain Is a “Venture”". Is there meaningful precedent for interpreting a supply chain in this way?