Liberia Gives Firestone Management 90-day Ultimatum

Liberian labour minister, Kofi Wood, has given managers at Firestone’s Harbel, Liberia rubber plantation 90-days to improve workers’ living conditions. “We have asked the Firestone management to improve the living conditions of the workers,” Wood told Reuters by telephone. “We have given them 90 days.” The minister did not say what the consequences of failing to meet the deadline might be.

Only days before, amidst reports that the workers at Firestone’s Liberia rubber plantation are continuing industrial action, Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf pleaded with employees to accept the management’s terms. However, according to local news sources, the Firestone workers have categorically rejected the president’s appeal. Industrial action is continuing in the form of a go-slow protest rather than full-scale strike.

President Sirleaf recently travelled to the plantation area in Harbel where she met with the management and the Firestone workers in an effort to find an amicable solution to the dispute between the Firestone management and the workers. She said that the fault was neither attributed to government nor the Firestone management and therefore urged the workers to go back to normal work. In response a “cross-section” of the workforce is reported to have staged a walkout.

The Liberian leader urged Firestone’s management to improve the living conditions of the workers at the rubber plantation and to create more educational opportunities for children in the area. Firestone representatives report that 7000 children go to school each day in buildings funded by the company. Company managers have assured locals that they will do their best to serve the interests of employees.

Rubber poaching

In an interesting footnote to the ongoing dispute, Liberian police have arrested 23 people, charging them with theft relating to the alleged tapping of rubber trees at the Harbel plantation. The alleged illegal tappers were arrested after “numerous complaints” from plantation management, according to news reports, including gun-point thefts of harvested rubber from plantation employees. Reports say the thieves even had a “factory” where they packaged the stolen latex for sale to customers.

Industrial action began at the plantation in February with workers protesting that they had received a 37.5 per cent pay cut over the years. In an exclusive interview with Tyres & Accessories at the time, Bridgestone Firestone denied that it had made such a pay cut, blaming it on exchange rates and the political upheaval associated with former president Charles Taylor’s regime.