Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. This episode contains descriptions
Speaker 1: of sexual exploitation and mentions of rape. Please take care
Speaker 1: while listening. Last year, Bloomberg Sheridan Prosso went to visit
Speaker 1: one of the biggest rubber plantations in Liberia.
Speaker 2: It is a very large plantation. The total areas double
Speaker 2: the size of Chicago, and it's just rose and rose,
Speaker 2: hundreds of rows of green rubber trees after rubber trees
Speaker 2: in all in rows, all very symmetrical.
Speaker 1: It's called the Liberian Agricultural Company Plantation. It's one of
Speaker 1: more than a dozen rubber and palm oil plantations in
Speaker 1: Africa and Asia owned by the European company Sockfin. Sockfin
Speaker 1: is far from the largest supplier of rubber and palm
Speaker 1: oil in the world, but it's a major player in
Speaker 1: parts of Africa.
Speaker 2: It is outsized and turned of its influence and in
Speaker 2: terms of its importance in the countries and in those
Speaker 2: economies where it operates. So, for example, in Liberia, it
Speaker 2: is the number two producer of rubber behind firestone, and
Speaker 2: rubber constitutes two thirds of the country's exports. So it's
Speaker 2: a huge employer and hugely important for that country's economy.
Speaker 1: Its palm oil winds up in products from food makers
Speaker 1: like Nesley, and its rubber is bought by some of
Speaker 1: the world's largest tire makers, including Continental, Bridgestone and Michelin.
Speaker 1: The Sackfin plantation sheared and visited in Liberia produces about
Speaker 1: twenty eight thousand metric tons of rubber every year. It
Speaker 1: employs more than four thousand people, including a young woman
Speaker 1: we'll call Rebecca. We're not going to tell you much
Speaker 1: about Rebecca to protect her identity, but we can tell
Speaker 1: you she's a mother of young children and she works
Speaker 1: as a tapper.
Speaker 2: The tapper is somebody who goes around from tree to tree.
Speaker 2: They cut the bark of the rubber tree. They put
Speaker 2: little cup on the tree. Think about collecting maple syrup,
Speaker 2: it's the same idea. It's latex that kind of drips
Speaker 2: out from the tree, goes into a cup. They coagulate
Speaker 2: that and dry it and turn that into natural rubber.
Speaker 2: That's where rubber comes from.
Speaker 1: Like many of her coworkers, Rebecca has lived on the
Speaker 1: plantation her whole life. It's the only employer in the area,
Speaker 1: and she depends on working there to survive.
Speaker 2: She grew up in an era where there were back
Speaker 2: to back civil wars in Liberia. She doesn't have an education,
Speaker 2: She doesn't have any money or any savings to be
Speaker 2: able to go to a big city and get any
Speaker 2: kind of other job and a restaurant or anything like that.
Speaker 2: She doesn't even have the means to leave.
Speaker 1: Full time employees of the plantation make five fifty a
Speaker 1: day in US dollars, but Rebecca, like the majority of
Speaker 1: people working there, is a contract worker, which means she
Speaker 1: makes less money and has to pay more than full
Speaker 1: time employees for food and school tuition for her children.
Speaker 1: And she's also dependent on supervisor is choosing her for
Speaker 1: work assignments each day.
Speaker 2: Rebecca told me that when she turns up for work
Speaker 2: in the morning, her supervisor says, you have to have
Speaker 2: sex with me or you can't do your job today.
Speaker 2: And sometimes she'll get a supervisor who doesn't ask that,
Speaker 2: but there's more than one supervisor who does ask that,
Speaker 2: and she's constantly, constantly just faced with the situation of
Speaker 2: how do I feed my kids, how do I do
Speaker 2: my job, and how do I fend off the advances
Speaker 2: of this supervisor who keeps these supervisors more than one
Speaker 2: who keep demanding that I have sex in order to
Speaker 2: do my job?
Speaker 1: How often does this happen to her?
Speaker 2: When I was asking Rebecca these questions, I asked her,
Speaker 2: tell me about the first time he asked you for sex?
Speaker 2: And she said, well, he said he wanted me and
Speaker 2: I said, no, I have my husband. And I said,
Speaker 2: I was trying to get a sense of oh, is
Speaker 2: that just one time? And she was quiet and I
Speaker 2: said was it more than one time? She said yeah.
Speaker 2: I said was it more than ten times? She said
Speaker 2: more than And I said was it more than fifty times?
Speaker 2: And she was kind of squirming uncomfortably in her chair
Speaker 2: and she said more than And I said, so, how
Speaker 2: many times have you been asked for sex in order
Speaker 2: to do your job? And she said every day.
Speaker 1: Today on the show, an investigation into persistent worker abuse
Speaker 1: at Sockfinn, one of the oldest rubber and palm oil
Speaker 1: companies in Africa, Why it's been so hard to stop
Speaker 1: and a new law that could give corporations like Sockfinn
Speaker 1: a big incentive to reform. I'm Sarah Holder and this
Speaker 1: is the big take from Bloomberg News. Bloomberg Sheridan Prosso
Speaker 1: spoke to eight women like Rebecca, who say they face
Speaker 1: repeated demands for sex in order to work at Sackfinn plantations,
Speaker 1: and eight more people, including a retired school teacher and
Speaker 1: community advocates, spoke on the record about hearing directly from
Speaker 1: women who had similar experiences. Sheridan says complaints about sexual
Speaker 1: harassment at Sackfinn sites have been surfacing for years.
Speaker 2: So, starting about a decade ago, some local engeos in
Speaker 2: various countries, including Liberia and also in Sierra Leone started
Speaker 2: publishing reports about bad conditions on these plantations, and they
Speaker 2: brought those concerns to the management. Sackfinn said, well, there
Speaker 2: haven't been any reports to the police, so it seems
Speaker 2: like it maybe isn't true. And so for a long
Speaker 2: time the company didn't take those allegations seriously because they
Speaker 2: were applying kind of a Western lens to the idea
Speaker 2: that if you were raped, you were coerced into sex,
Speaker 2: or you had demands for sex by your supervisor on
Speaker 2: a daily basis, as was reported to be happening there,
Speaker 2: that you would go to the police. And that's not
Speaker 2: what happens on a plantation in rural Africa.
Speaker 1: None of the eight women shared and spoke with filed
Speaker 1: a formal complaint about the sex for work demands they faced.
Speaker 2: There aren't really police to go to that people have
Speaker 2: access to to make complaints like that, and if you
Speaker 2: do make a complaint, you lose your livelihood, you can't
Speaker 2: feed your children, and so the repercussions that these women
Speaker 2: have long faced for trying to come forward have allowed
Speaker 2: the company for a long time to not really see
Speaker 2: that there was a very deep and systematic problem at
Speaker 2: many of its plantations.
Speaker 1: Soffin has been producing rubber and palm oil since the
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties. It got its start in the Belgian Congo
Speaker 1: during the rule of King LEOPOLDI.
Speaker 2: Soffin is one of the only legacy institutions, one of
Speaker 2: the only producers of rubber and palm oil that's been
Speaker 2: around since the colonial era and is still operating as
Speaker 2: countries gained their independence all throughout the nineteen sixties. In
Speaker 2: that era in Africa, it lost a lot of its holdings,
Speaker 2: but then it started regaining and expanding them into the
Speaker 2: nineteen nineties and two thousands, when there was a wave
Speaker 2: of privatization across Africa and Sackfinn then acquired a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of concessions that were suddenly being privatized and at
Speaker 2: the same time countries recovering from civil wars that wanted
Speaker 2: to bring in foreign investors.
Speaker 1: Today, Sackfinn has two owners. One of them is Vonceanne Bollerat,
Speaker 1: who is sometimes called the rupert Murdoch of France. His
Speaker 1: fortune is worth about nine billion US dollars and through
Speaker 1: his holding company Bollerrat Se, he's the largest shareholder in
Speaker 1: the French media company Vivendi.
Speaker 2: It's a very large conglomerate and as part of the TV,
Speaker 2: the radio and newspaper empire that he owns, he has
Speaker 2: increasingly been pushing a kind of right wing ish conservative agenda.
Speaker 1: Bollat is one of the wealthiest men in France and
Speaker 1: through his holding company, he also owns about thirty five
Speaker 1: percent of Sockfinn.
Speaker 2: And he has long maintained that because he's a minority owner,
Speaker 2: he says he's not responsible for anything that Sackfinn does,
Speaker 2: and he's not responsible for its daily management.
Speaker 1: That would be the other co owner.
Speaker 2: So the person who is responsible for its daily management
Speaker 2: is Ubert Fabrie, and he is a Belgian businessman. His
Speaker 2: father was connected to the original founders of the Suckfinn empire.
Speaker 1: Fabri declined to be interviewed for the story, and a
Speaker 1: spokesperson for Ballerat and for his holding company also declined
Speaker 1: to comment. Nonprofits had been raising concerns about Sackfinn's labor
Speaker 1: and environmental practices for years. In twenty sixteen, some of
Speaker 1: Sackfinn's customers started pushing for reforms.
Speaker 2: And Nessley in particular started asking for Sockfinn to improve
Speaker 2: some of its practices. So that pressure started happening from
Speaker 2: consumer companies that realized that things were kind of changing
Speaker 2: and that they also had to make sure that their
Speaker 2: supply chains reflected kind of a broader commitment to sustainability
Speaker 2: and good labor practices.
Speaker 1: Sackfinn agreed to partner with a Swiss NGO called the
Speaker 1: Earthworm Foundation to develop some social responsibility guidelines and assess
Speaker 1: allegations of sexual abuse and other issues. Over the years,
Speaker 1: more and more allegations came to light, and in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, Earthworms started conducting audits, interviewing hundreds of workers
Speaker 1: at eight Sackfinn plantations. At all of the plantations it audited.
Speaker 1: Earthworm found credible evidence substantiating these allegations of sexual harassment,
Speaker 1: and there were a lot of other problems too.
Speaker 2: So Sockfin has long faced allegations of paying workers poorly
Speaker 2: and not equipping them fully with the productive equipment that
Speaker 2: they need for their jobs, or deducting that equipment from
Speaker 2: their pay. The company has recently conducted its own audits
Speaker 2: to see if those allegations were true, and did find
Speaker 2: that in some cases, workers were still working twelve hours
Speaker 2: a day without overtime pay.
Speaker 1: At five plantations, Earthworm found evidence to support some, but
Speaker 1: not all, allegations of labor rights and worker safety violations.
Speaker 1: The company says it's been taking steps to remedy these issues.
Speaker 1: Lawsuits and complaints have also accused Stockfinn of causing environmental damage.
Speaker 2: Access to fresh drinking water is a problem in many
Speaker 2: of those plantations, according to the audits that have been
Speaker 2: done recently.
Speaker 1: The company has also faced allegations of appropriating farmland and
Speaker 1: destroying villages without fully comb and saving the people the
Speaker 1: company displaced.
Speaker 2: So there are still these outstanding issues about land, about labor,
Speaker 2: about environmental issues, and definitely about sexual harassment. And even
Speaker 2: allegations of rape.
Speaker 1: Sackfin has not disputed Earthworm's findings. The company says it
Speaker 1: has taken steps to address sexual harassment, including issuing a
Speaker 1: series of action plants.
Speaker 2: Things like put up a sign no sex for jobs,
Speaker 2: or strengthen our sexual harassment training policy. And when I
Speaker 2: visited the plantation in late twenty twenty four, people told
Speaker 2: me that there had not been any improvement because putting
Speaker 2: up a sign that says no sex for jobs, offering
Speaker 2: more training on your sexual arrassment policy, or strengthening your
Speaker 2: sexual harassment policy was not the solution to this systemic problem.
Speaker 1: A spokesperson for the company said in an email that
Speaker 1: Sackfinn has obtained numerous environmental certifications and has quote a
Speaker 1: deep seated commitment and drive to uphold the highest sustainability
Speaker 1: standards coming up why a new EU law could soon
Speaker 1: pressure Stockfin to change. In twenty twenty four, the European
Speaker 1: Union passed a piece of landmark legislation. It was designed
Speaker 1: to hold corporations accountable for environmental, labor and human rights
Speaker 1: violations throughout their supply chains, and it has teeth when
Speaker 1: it goes into effect in twenty twenty seven, it will
Speaker 1: allow regulators to find violators more than five percent of
Speaker 1: their annual revenue. For context, Sackfinn's revenue in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three was about a billion US dollars. That's the last
Speaker 1: full year we have data for because the owners took
Speaker 1: the company private last September. Bloomberg Sheridan Prosso says the
Speaker 1: law could have profound effects on the power dynamics between
Speaker 1: the companies that own rubber plantations and the people who
Speaker 1: work on them.
Speaker 2: That's a whole game changer. This is the harshest law
Speaker 2: that's ever been passed anywhere in the world, holding companies
Speaker 2: accountable for what happens at the end of their supply chains,
Speaker 2: anything that happens that affects people, that harms people at
Speaker 2: the end of their supply chains, and that they can
Speaker 2: be sued by the Rebeccas of Africa, by people in
Speaker 2: Africa who can show direct harm from the company, either
Speaker 2: negligently or willfully allowing these bad things to happen.
Speaker 1: How has that changed how customers of sackfin have reacted
Speaker 1: to these kinds of reports and allegations.
Speaker 2: I think that the fact that all of the individual
Speaker 2: countries of Europe have to put in place their own
Speaker 2: measures that involve fines that involve potentially in the case
Speaker 2: of deforestation import bands, the finds are pretty substantial, and
Speaker 2: the threats of lawsuits are even more substantial. I think
Speaker 2: it does seem that that is raising the sense of
Speaker 2: urgency for the end suppliers that not just Sockfinn could
Speaker 2: get sued under these new laws, but Michelin, Continental, Bridgetone
Speaker 2: and potentially even Nesle could be sued too.
Speaker 1: Nesli doesn't purchase products directly from Sckfinn anymore, but Sckfinn
Speaker 1: palm oil is still part of its supply chain. What
Speaker 1: have these companies said so far when you spoke to
Speaker 1: them about what you found?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean Nesli says that they take a supplier
Speaker 2: engagement seriously and they work with them to try to
Speaker 2: establish best practices right and they for a long time
Speaker 2: required their suppliers to be certified as environmentally sustainable.
Speaker 1: Sheridan also asked tire company leaders for their reactions to
Speaker 1: the sex for work demands at Sackfinn's plantations.
Speaker 2: Michelin said, first of all, they said they were not
Speaker 2: aware of the sex for work demands that was going
Speaker 2: on at Sockfinn's plantation, even though they directly source from
Speaker 2: lack in Liberia, and even though those audit results were published,
Speaker 2: including the action plans for how to deal with it
Speaker 2: were published on Sackfin's own website, but they said they
Speaker 2: weren't aware, and if they were aware, the CEO of
Speaker 2: Micheline told us we would of course not be sourcing
Speaker 2: from the company that allows that to happen. In the
Speaker 2: case of Bridgetone, though they said that they did know
Speaker 2: and that they have been working with the company since
Speaker 2: they found out to try to also improve its practices.
Speaker 1: But Sheridan says one of the issues she found in
Speaker 1: her reporting is that action plans and best practices on
Speaker 1: paper often failed to translate to change on the ground.
Speaker 2: One of the things in particular was they set up
Speaker 2: something called gender committees, and the gender committee at each
Speaker 2: plantation is supposed to take complaints from the women and
Speaker 2: to try to figure out how to deal with issues
Speaker 2: of allegations and investigate them and see if it's true. Well,
Speaker 2: in the cases of the gender committee, the audits themselves
Speaker 2: found that many of them were ineffective. They didn't have
Speaker 2: office space, nobody knew how to contact them, they'd never
Speaker 2: actually operate. They were just set up in name only.
Speaker 1: It's an open question whether the new EU law will
Speaker 1: be able to change the long standing issues at Sackfinn plantations.
Speaker 1: Have the advocates that you've spoken to, who have been
Speaker 1: doing this work for a long time trying to raise awareness,
Speaker 1: do they feel hopeful about that new urgency.
Speaker 2: First of all, twenty twenty seven is a little bit
Speaker 2: of a ways away, and for the people who are
Speaker 2: working to improve conditions right now on the ground in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, two years of sex demands for Rebecca
Speaker 2: are too long to wait.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, one plantation in Liberia has seen improvements,
Speaker 1: but not by Sockfen. After Sackfin sold the Salala Rubber
Speaker 1: Court plantation in August twenty twenty four, it's new owner
Speaker 1: began addressing long standing worker complaints, including a lack of
Speaker 1: safety equipment, medical resources, and generally poor living conditions on
Speaker 1: their plantation.
Speaker 2: The new owner is an Indian businessman who has worked
Speaker 2: in Liberia for a long time. He goes by.
Speaker 1: GT that's short for Upjets, saying such Diva, Such Diva
Speaker 1: says he isn't aware of reports of sexual abuse or
Speaker 1: harassment and hasn't read Earthworm's audits, but he also says
Speaker 1: he's committed to Stockfinn's action plan.
Speaker 2: So gd came in and immediately made some improvements in
Speaker 2: What he did was immediately renovate worker housing and then
Speaker 2: he bought medical supplies for the clinic hospital clinic that
Speaker 2: had been completely emptied of supplies. He ordered an ambulance.
Speaker 2: He renovated the school for the worker's children, and he
Speaker 2: started feeding the children of the eight hundred workers on
Speaker 2: the plantation daily meals hot meals at school.
Speaker 1: Has he taken any steps to address the systemic issues
Speaker 1: that are behind the sex for work allegations.
Speaker 2: So one of the things he also did was he
Speaker 2: changed the way that people are compensated, so instead of
Speaker 2: having to meet a quota in order to get paid,
Speaker 2: you get paid by how much you produce. So that
Speaker 2: helped people not feel so drained as to try to
Speaker 2: get so much work done, because part of the problem
Speaker 2: is that in order to get that work done, men
Speaker 2: were hiring women to do proofree chores for them.
Speaker 1: Proof reachores like cleaning the cups used to collect latex
Speaker 1: when it drips out of rubber trees.
Speaker 2: But sometimes the men would say, well, now you have
Speaker 2: to have sex with me or else I'm not going
Speaker 2: to pay you, And so that was common on the plantation.
Speaker 2: So GD changed that system too, and he now employs
Speaker 2: cup cleaners as actual employees and they get one hundred
Speaker 2: dollars a month instead of fifteen or a demand for sex.
Speaker 2: Another thing is that there was a kind of a
Speaker 2: debt service that people who needed money for like an emergency,
Speaker 2: and so he did away with that. If you need
Speaker 2: money for medical emergency, you can get it for free
Speaker 2: and then it just gets deducted from your pay without
Speaker 2: a huge interest, right. So there were various things like
Speaker 2: that he has done to try to improve the conditions
Speaker 2: of the people. And I think one of the things
Speaker 2: that becomes clear is that maybe just a few management
Speaker 2: changes on some of these plantations could actually result in
Speaker 2: just a much better working system of much better conditions
Speaker 2: for other workers there.
Speaker 1: And did you get to talk to any of the
Speaker 1: women post new leadership and did you hear about any
Speaker 1: changes in their experiences of sexual harassment and abuse?
Speaker 2: When I visited the plantation in November, it had only
Speaker 2: been reopened for a week, and since then there have
Speaker 2: been some issues about unrest still, some people who didn't
Speaker 2: get their jaws back who wanted them, or there's been
Speaker 2: it's dry seasons, or there's been some wildfires, and so
Speaker 2: the conditions now are a little bit too unstable, but
Speaker 2: we'll have to see over the longer term whether it
Speaker 2: makes a difference.
Speaker 1: This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by David Fox. It was edited
Speaker 1: by Tracy Samuelson and Robert Friedman. It was fact checked
Speaker 1: by Audrenatapia and mixed and sound designed by Alex Uguera.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Julianne Wilkinson and Henry Baker. Our senior
Speaker 1: producer is Naomi Shaven and your editor is Elizabeth Ponso.
Speaker 1: Our deputy executive producer is Julia Weaver. Our executive producer
Speaker 1: is Nicole Beamster. Bar Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts.
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