Apple and Google Named In US Lawsuit Over Congolese Child Cobalt Mining Deaths (theguardian.com) 108
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A landmark legal case has been launched against the world's largest tech companies by Congolese families who say their children were killed or maimed while mining for cobalt used to power smartphones, laptops and electric cars, the Guardian can reveal. Apple, Google, Dell, Microsoft and Tesla have been named as defendants in a lawsuit filed in Washington DC by human rights firm International Rights Advocates on behalf of 14 parents and children from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The lawsuit accuses the companies of aiding and abetting in the death and serious injury of children who they claim were working in cobalt mines in their supply chain. The families and injured children are seeking damages for forced labour and further compensation for unjust enrichment, negligent supervision and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Since cobalt is used in the rechargeable lithium batteries used in millions of products sold by these tech companies, the lawsuit argues that they all aided and abetted the mining companies that profited from the labor of children who were forced to work in dangerous conditions -- conditions that ultimately led to death and serious injury.
"The court papers claim that Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Google and Tesla all have the authority and resources to supervise and regulate their cobalt supply chains and that their inability to do so contributed to the deaths and injuries suffered by their clients," reports The Guardian. The lawsuit says children were working illegally at a mine owned by UK mining company Glencore, which sold cobalt to Umicore, a Brussels-based metal and mining trader, which then sold battery-grade cobalt to several of the tech companies. Several other mines mentioned in the lawsuit are owned by Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, a major Chinese cobalt firm, which also supplies several tech companies.
"The court papers claim that Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Google and Tesla all have the authority and resources to supervise and regulate their cobalt supply chains and that their inability to do so contributed to the deaths and injuries suffered by their clients," reports The Guardian. The lawsuit says children were working illegally at a mine owned by UK mining company Glencore, which sold cobalt to Umicore, a Brussels-based metal and mining trader, which then sold battery-grade cobalt to several of the tech companies. Several other mines mentioned in the lawsuit are owned by Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, a major Chinese cobalt firm, which also supplies several tech companies.
Defendants (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Defendants (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, they basically just picked the five most famous tech companies in the world.
A detailed thread about the case and the issues involved is here [twitter.com].
A TL/DR version of it is: the connections between Kamoto -> Katanga -> Glencore -> Umicore are solid. The connections between the children and Kamoto, and between Umicore and the companies being sued, is tenuous at best, and the law firm is somewhat sketchy. That said, there's real human rights issues that warrant a nuanced discussion (which are gone into in more detail above).
Re:Defendants (Score:4, Informative)
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But where will I get my congo drums?
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The same place you get your CongA Drums: Cuba.
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Ideally nobody should buy anything from Congo and the liability problem would be solved!
DRC produces more cobalt than all other countries combined. Cobalt production [wikipedia.org].
There is no way to just shut off their supply.
Tech companies should take reasonable measures to ensure their supply chains don't use child labor or forced labor. But there is only so much they can do. This really should be the responsibility of the government of DRC, but they have little authority in the eastern areas of the countries where most mines are located.
There is no actual evidence that the tech companies used cobalt fr
Re: Defendants (Score:2)
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Caffeinated Bacon, always lying. (Score:2)
Re:Defendants (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like they picked the deepest pockets they could find. This way they're more likely to be bought off than if they go after the ACTUAL perps....
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You mean the companies that actually use the product and profit off child labor...oh wait...
The companies don't use the products. Their customers (you) use them. Their customers also profit in the sense that they get cheaper products.
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The actual perps are untouchable (Score:2)
The goal may just be to score a payday, but it might also be to get the customers to stop doing business with the perps. If so this is the best we can hope for.
Too many defendant's - they ALL have control? (Score:2)
One could logically argue that Apple effectively controls the cobalt industry. That argument would be wrong, but it would be logically possible. You can't logically argue that each pf the major tech companies controls it. If Apple controls it, Google and Tesla don't.
Re: Too many defendant's - they ALL have control? (Score:2)
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Yeah, this is a tenuous series of arguments, at best. Plenty of others here (as well as your link) have already pointed out that Tesla doesn't even source its cobalt from the Congo in the first place, so I'll talk a bit about Apple instead.
For Apple's part, here's their current Supplier Responsibility progress report [apple.com]. Long story short, they don't allow child labor, 100% of their cobalt suppliers have complied with third-party auditing since 2016, and two cobalt suppliers have been removed due to unspecified
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they basically just picked the five most famous tech companies in the world
But somehow they missed suing my neighbor, Mr. J. M. Pickering, of Saville Lane, Dorset, who I think is at least as guilty as Amazon or Google. I saw him with my own eyes buying and using batteries in cold blood!
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...the mining companies that profited from the labor of children who were forced to work in dangerous conditions
Forced to work by who, exactly?
Re:Defendants (Score:5, Funny)
Elon Musk, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Michael Dell, and Bill Gates. They personally oversee the mining operation and punish the children that don't work hard enough, Temple of Doom style.
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Elon Musk, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Michael Dell, and Bill Gates. They personally oversee the mining operation and punish the children that don't work hard enough, Temple of Doom style.
But it's definitely not these childrens' parents. The parents had no idea, and thought the kids were in school all day!
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Much like children working on cocoa farms, the parents are only given two choices.
+ If their children are with them then they're working. And the parents are required to keep them in line.
+ They're left at home where they can easily be kidnapped and made into slave labor/child soldiers somewhere the parents will never see them again.
It's a no-win situation and comes down to the lesser of two evils.
The Parents don't have a lot of choice either (Score:2)
The parents aren't being neglectful, they're trying to scrape together enough money to feed everyone. They shouldn't have to do that. This is not the 1600s. Children shouldn't have to work.
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Thanks!
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The mining companies will just go bankrupt and all those local jobs are lost.
These tech companies have big pockets and if a few go out of business then there are plenty of others to pick it right up.
That said, supply chains are extremely complex and it is nearly impossible to buy anything completely clean (morally).
There is an area of a lot of people wanting a job just to survive. A company will be there to exploit the labor as there are people so desperate for work that they will be willing to tolerate nea
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Except: https://www.theguardian.com/gl... [theguardian.com]
Apple said: “Apple is deeply committed to the responsible sourcing of materials that go into our products. We’ve led the industry by establishing the strictest standards for our suppliers and are constantly working to raise the bar for ourselves, and the industry.
“In 2014, we were the first to start mapping our cobalt supp
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that said, supply chains are extremely complex and it is nearly impossible to buy anything completely clean (morally).
Apple is deeply committed to the responsible sourcing of materials that go into our products...
Those two statements aren't mutually exclusive. If you're talking about one Cobalt ore rock, it's 100% possible to know who dug it out of the ground, and where it went from there. When you are trying to track 90,000 metric tons of ore mined in the DRC annually (140K tons globally) it is, without a doubt, nearly impossible to get it 100% right 100% of the time. I applaud Apple for what they are doing, and I'm going to assume that every company on this list has some sort of similar policy. But to imply th
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But the victims were the people on the bottom, who lost their lively hood
Loss of a lively head covering is a terrible thing.
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Livelihood. One word. No "y".
A lively hood is a criminal who is fun at parties....
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Preposterous (Score:2)
By this lawsuit's logic, every store that sells foods with milk as an ingredient should be required to hire inspectors to go around to all the dairy farms that supply the milk, and ensure that working conditions are safe.
That's preposterous, of course. And the Democratic Republic of the Congo's failure to regulate the mining companies operating within its borders doesn't make the lawsuit's logic any less preposterous; rather, it makes it more preposterous, because targeting the wrong entities delays the da
Am I being sued? (Score:5, Insightful)
The lawsuit says children were working illegally at a mine owned by UK mining company Glencore, which sold cobalt to Umicore, a Brussels-based metal and mining trader, which then sold battery-grade cobalt to several of the tech companies.
I've used products created by those technology companies. Am I also being sued?
It might be too late to warn you, but I made this post with one of those company's products so you might get sued as well just for reading it. I'd pull the plug right now and deny everything.
Re:Am I being sued? (Score:5, Interesting)
The funny thing is that Kamoto is primarily a copper mine; cobalt is a byproduct.
Everyone here who's not using copper in their homes, cars, and computers, raise your hands.
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Congo copper? I doubt it. And there is no funny thing here.
Re:Am I being sued? (Score:5, Informative)
This is about the Kamoto mine. The subsidiary of Katanga that runs Kamoto is literally called the Kamoto Copper Company [miningreview.com].
During last year, a cobalt spike raised the value of the cobalt byproduct above the copper primary product. But said spike has since collapsed.
Lastly, it's highly dishonest of a debate technique to try to interpret the phrase "The funny thing is" - which means "that which follows is ironic" - as meaning, "I find this whole situation hilarious". Here, for example, is a Holocaust victim [google.is] saying "The funny thing is" when describing their internment.
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I always have mod points, except when I want them. Good post.
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Caffeinated Bacon, always a liar. (Score:2)
And more importantly, USA produces far far more Copper ( $ 3-19 BILLION / year) while we export $ ~.6B / year, and import $ ~.4B / year [wikipedia.org]
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The court papers claim that Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Google and Tesla all have the authority and resources to supervise and regulate their cobalt supply chains...
I am neither a lawyer or geo-political wonk so my perspective means almost nothing, but...
They may have the authority and resources to do so, but do they have the legal responsibility to do so? I can see a moral or ethical responsibility, but a legal one? Is that true? How much sway does a company like Apple or the other defendants have in DRC, a na
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They may have the authority and resources to do so, but do they have the legal responsibility to do so?
According to Apple, they have the _moral_ responsibility to avoid abuse in their supply chain. See Apple's latest annual report: https://www.apple.com/supplier... [apple.com]
So nobody should say, and Apple doesn't say, that Apple doesn't have any responsibility there. What is outside Apple's control would be suppliers who are just lying, and suppliers who are just lied to themselves. At some point someone will know that children are used for mining and are endangered, and at some point someone will have made a consc
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cobalt in fossil fuels (Score:1)
Re:cobalt in fossil fuels (Score:5, Informative)
Last numbers I've seen, batteries were about 2/5ths of global usage, with the rest divided up between a wide variety of other industries (catalysts for the petrochemical industry, alloying agents for certain types of steel, pigments, etc).
The reason artisanal mining spiked was that there was a big boom in cobalt prices, both real (battery rampup) and speculative (forecasts of battery demand times the amount of cobalt per kWh). Since artisanal mines can be built faster than industrial mines, they tended to fill the gaps. Respectable producers try to exclude artisanal content, so most has been bought up by Chinese front companies like Dongfang and "laundered" with their legit supplies to send back to China, where it's used in a mix of consumer goods and locally-made EVs.
The problem with the spike was that the demand didn't materialize. Battery producers have been dramatically reducing the cobalt content in their cells. The average LCO cell (cell phones, laptops) is about 1/3rd cobalt by mass. As of a year and a half ago, your average NMC/NCA cell was 8% cobalt, but then it was discovered during a German teardown that Tesla was down to 2,8%. There's been a big race down since, and it's looking like it's heading to 0%, or somewhere near that. As a result, cobalt prices crashed this year. Glencore had to close Mutanda to stabilize them. Reports suggest that, thankfully, artisanal mining is way down in the Congo.
Nearly 1 in 10 African children work in dangerous work - only a tiny fraction thereof in artisanal mining for cobalt. It's an endemic problem, and one that I hope people will actually care about in general, rather than only when it's useful as an anti-battery talking point. It's a problem of wealth inequality fueled by political instability, corruption, and a near ubiquitous attitude from foreign corporations operating in the continent of, "Just tell us who we need to pay in order to let us operate undisturbed", rather than trying to ensure that the money actually gets to those who need it.
A classic example of the latter is the oil industry in Nigeria (where the infant mortality rate has doubled in the Niger delta). The government demanded a sizeable cut of their revenues in order to let them operate, which they happily paid. Then, to ensure security, they paid off local chieftans / leaders. "Job done, the people of Nigeria benefit from our operations, we're doing a good thing", right? But little of the money they paid to the central government made it to the people of the delta, and neither did the money that they paid to local leaders. Indeed, a lot of it actually went into weapons purchases, to try to extract even more money from the oil companies. Meanwhile, local people, feeling exploited, turned to tapping the pipelines and selling oil on the black market. This led to extensive leaks, widespread pollution, and more hatred of the local oil industry. In order to protect themselves from growing unrest, they turned to the Nigerian government, which was benefiting handsomely from the oil industry, and more than willing to protect it. But the heavy-handed crackdown by the Nigerian military led to even more local unrest.
If you want to morally produce in an impoverished country with rife endemic corruption, you have to personally ensure that the money you spend is actually going to the general public. Work through NGOs. Hand it out in person if you have to. What you can't do is just trust that if you just pay the "right people", it'll trickle down.
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If you want to morally produce in an impoverished country
You have to buy permission to produce there in the first place. From El Presidente and the local tribal chieftans*. And once that's done and you start paying the miners their deserved $15 per hour, the politicians will see that and figure that there was more money in the payoff kitty that they were not getting. So the bribery fees go up.
Good luck stamping out bribery. If you shut down the local tribal sticky palms, that's cultural imperialism. And maybe religious discrimination as well. And if you go up th
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Tesla is claiming that they will have eliminated Cobalt from their batteries in the next couple years. IIRC After the article about German teardown that noted the 2.8% Cobalt came out Musk commented that they were just 2 generations away from completely removing cobalt and that the next version would have less than 1%. It was either 2020 or 2022 they were planning on being Cobalt free.
Accomplice (Score:2)
Re: Accomplice (Score:1)
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Purism is one of the only phone with a replaceable battery and other saver technologies also.
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... when you buy something with an irreplaceable battery.
The cobalt is used to make the battery. Replacing the battery would use just as much cobalt as replacing the entire device. If anything, devices with replaceable batteries probably consume cobalt at a higher rate than other devices since the batteries would tend to be replaced more often.
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It's a disgrace. (Score:2)
I get that some nations and global regions are still in "manchester capitalism" industrialisation mode and we have teenage girls sewing my t-shirts 12 hours a day under conditions that hopefully will be gone in a decade. I also get that some 17-year old chinese girl living in some factory for months on end, sharing a cot with her shift-change friend, working 12/7 is happy she has a job and can support her familiy living a three day trainride away in some distant chinese village that has one well, one genera
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!
My two eurocents.
I think that the mines should b closed permanently. That would fix the problem. No more expoloitation.
That was definitely written ironically. But as likely as not, these companies will find different places to purchase their Cobalt. Australia and Cuba have a lot of Cobalt reserves Philippines, Canada and Russia as well.
If I as a company am liable for something I have zero control over, you can bet I'll try to do as much business as possible with modern countries that aren't likely to employ children i
And the parents had no involvement? (Score:3, Interesting)
The parents could have stopped their children from working in a mine. They're "on the ground" in the Congo, and have a responsibility as parents to do due diligence on anything they allow their children to do.
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Many of these children have no parents due to war and disease.
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"Are there no prisons?" "Are there no workhouses?"
Re:And the parents had no involvement? (Score:4, Insightful)
And you think simply closing down the mines will somehow mitigate that extreme poverty? If better options were available they would have taken them rather than work in the mines. Taking away what few options they have isn't going to improve their situation.
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Agree completely. Was planning on posting something equivalent to parent if noone else had made the point....
they should go after the mining companies. (Score:4, Informative)
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Oh don't worry, the federal government will find a way to shut down any actual investment in Canada. C-69 wasn't just "no more pipelines." It was also "no mining, no heavy industry of any kind... unless it gets us votes in Quebec. Then we'll approve anything."
Whenever a law makes things less predictable for investing, and more dependent on the Minister in Office, lookout. The same if it opens anything up for even more litigation. It is part of the Watermelons' strategy these days: if the Feds won't b
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smartphones, laptops and electric cars (Score:1)
AND Solar Panels. So can we just start using Nuclear already? We need need to build plants in every leftist neighborhood using only old Chernobyl technology. Two birds - one stone.
Money grab (Score:2)
Dumbassery (Score:4, Interesting)
I understand that the loss suffered by the Congolese is real. However, making bullshit cases against entities that have no liability does not help them. It makes the case seem frivolous. This is plainly a way to extort compensation money from the richest firms.
See if someone sells you a mobile phone on ebay, after murdering the initial owner of the said phone, that does not make you liable for murder.
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>Not in the least. You don't live in extreme poverty. Simple fact, Apple and others profit off of child labor.
If this is the case, then it is the Congolese governments problem. Stop squeezing the balls of your moral high horse and come up with a rational argument instead. Moral values are subjective and useless unless everyone agrees on the same thing. That's why we don't have them as legal arguments. Even if it is true that Apple and others profit from child labour, they are not obligated to monitor the
Why is this lawsuit being taken seriously (Score:4, Interesting)
Let me see, a U.S. based advocacy group files a lawsuit in U.S. Courts which claims children were injured near a mine in Zaire owned by European companies. Why not sue in Europe- or even Zaire?
Well, for starters, if you file a frivolous suit in Europe you have to pay the other side's legal bills. In the U.S. there is no such rule and thus no penalty for filing frivolous suits. Anybody here want to make a $100 bet on the outcome of the suit on, let's say, January 1, 2024? Or you could just go back and look at any of the 2016-17 Slashdot "X has just filed a lawsuit in the U.S. against Y company which doesn't do business here" and see where they went.
Now let's be frank; this is a press release with a legal filing attached and is designed to gin-up articles like this. This may sound like a bit of harmless fun but it is not.
First, real litigants here in the U.S. can't get their cases heard because filings like these use legal maneuvers to get put at the "must be heard today" docket. Basically out federal courts are being choked with crap- and the judges allow it to happen because, frankly, talking about mines in Zaire is much more fun that talking about FOIA requests the government is ignoring or cases of product liability happening right next door. All of the phoney "we don't have enough Judges" stuff would be ended if the Judges would spend one weekend reading the recent filings and toss them- with costs- on the following Monday. The breathless "A suit has been filed..." article would be followed the next day with a "The Judge has thrown out the suit" article- and the pplaintiff would be faced with some serious bills and, worse, laughter
Second, in addition to the real costs of Judicial crowding out, we get the mindshare problem. In the press business there is something called "a story hook", which means "We really want to write another story on (fill in the far left or far right blank) and this lawsuit gives us the excuse to write one- or half-a-dozen- stories on our favorite pet, ideological hobby horse. So the Nazi press was filled with stories about fat Jewish business men defiling innocent Christian shop girls, the Soviet press was filled with the latest revelations in the trials of British spys and the U.S. got thousands of articles about the child stuck in a well- at least American bloviating has a human interest angle and always includes the innocent child in danger trope... because the average person cares about lost animals and children, and let me tell you, that's not all half bad.
But Slashdot is not supposed to be about lost children in the well. It should be a bit more serious than that and I'm both saddened and annoyed when the lead article is another "baby in the well" story. For the fun of it go back to Slashdot 12/17/2017, look at the articles and ask, "How much of this mattered and why was it here". And the answer will be...
Missing a set of companies responsible... (Score:1)
I noticed they deliberately avoided going after the battery companies (excepting Tesla.) Where's Panasonic and Friends in this lawsuit?
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At best (Score:2)
could have been avoided (Score:1)
This all could have been avoided if the company had used a disclaimer along the likes of: "This mine uses free-range, cage-free children".
Best Mineral Mining Usually Worse than Recycling (Score:2)
Listen up you AI/robot fantacists: (Score:3)
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How about you all go focus on gods-be-damned robots that will do the dangerous jobs like mining raw materials so we don't have to send people (especially CHILDREN!) down into holes in the ground!?
Such "robots" (actually, mere mechanical machines working just fine) have existed for a long time now, and are used in every country where child labor is more expensive to buy than machines. Which is not the case in Zaire.
Step 1: Send your children to work in mine (Score:2)
Step 3: Profit! (Not for the children, of course, but probably for a lot of lawyers
Am I really supposed to see the defendants as the crooks, here? They are sure not likable entities, but not as amoral as those who raise children to send them working in mines to support their own upkeep.
We have the morals we can afford (and feel like) (Score:2)
Niven and Pournelle phrased it in a novel as "Societies have the morals they can afford". They were making a conservative/libertarian argument for putting aside moral considerations in the making of money, because the money would create higher morals in the end, because people want to be moral, but will sacrifice them for "survival". It's an interesting argument for the feudal society that "Lucifer's Hammer" was falling into, but poor if you're trying to defend child labour behind the low prices that l