April 16, 2025 • 20 mins
For years, a rubber and palm oil company that supplies some of the world’s top tiremakers has been dogged by allegations of sexual coercion at its plantations. Socfin — short for Société Financière des Caoutchoucs — says it has taken steps to improve matters, but an exclusive Bloomberg report shows those claims remain widespread.
On today’s Big Take podcast, host Sarah Holder sits down with Bloomberg’s Sheridan Prasso to discuss her investigation into why the abuse has been so hard to stop — and a new EU law that could give corporations like Socfin a big incentive to reform.
Read more: Sex-for-Work Allegations Hang Over Tycoons' Rubber Plantations
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. This episode contains descriptions
of sexual exploitation and mentions of rape. Please take care
while listening. Last year, Bloomberg Sheridan Prosso went to visit
one of the biggest rubber plantations in Liberia.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
It is a very large plantation. The total areas double
the size of Chicago, and it's just rose and rose,
hundreds of rows of green rubber trees after rubber trees
in all in rows, all very symmetrical.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
It's called the Liberian Agricultural Company Plantation. It's one of
more than a dozen rubber and palm oil plantations in
Africa and Asia owned by the European company Sockfin. Sockfin
is far from the largest supplier of rubber and palm
oil in the world, but it's a major player in
parts of Africa.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
It is outsized and turned of its influence and in
terms of its importance in the countries and in those
economies where it operates. So, for example, in Liberia, it
is the number two producer of rubber behind firestone, and
rubber constitutes two thirds of the country's exports. So it's
a huge employer and hugely important for that country's economy.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Its palm oil winds up in products from food makers
like Nesley, and its rubber is bought by some of
the world's largest tire makers, including Continental, Bridgestone and Michelin.
The Sackfin plantation sheared and visited in Liberia produces about
twenty eight thousand metric tons of rubber every year. It
employs more than four thousand people, including a young woman
(01:44):
we'll call Rebecca. We're not going to tell you much
about Rebecca to protect her identity, but we can tell
you she's a mother of young children and she works
as a tapper.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
The tapper is somebody who goes around from tree to tree.
They cut the bark of the rubber tree. They put
little cup on the tree. Think about collecting maple syrup,
it's the same idea. It's latex that kind of drips
out from the tree, goes into a cup. They coagulate
that and dry it and turn that into natural rubber.
That's where rubber comes from.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Like many of her coworkers, Rebecca has lived on the
plantation her whole life. It's the only employer in the area,
and she depends on working there to survive.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
She grew up in an era where there were back
to back civil wars in Liberia. She doesn't have an education,
She doesn't have any money or any savings to be
able to go to a big city and get any
kind of other job and a restaurant or anything like that.
She doesn't even have the means to leave.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Full time employees of the plantation make five fifty a
day in US dollars, but Rebecca, like the majority of
people working there, is a contract worker, which means she
makes less money and has to pay more than full
time employees for food and school tuition for her children.
And she's also dependent on supervisor is choosing her for
(03:01):
work assignments each day.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Rebecca told me that when she turns up for work
in the morning, her supervisor says, you have to have
sex with me or you can't do your job today.
And sometimes she'll get a supervisor who doesn't ask that,
but there's more than one supervisor who does ask that,
and she's constantly, constantly just faced with the situation of
(03:27):
how do I feed my kids, how do I do
my job, and how do I fend off the advances
of this supervisor who keeps these supervisors more than one
who keep demanding that I have sex in order to
do my job?
Speaker 1 (03:41):
How often does this happen to her?
Speaker 2 (03:43):
When I was asking Rebecca these questions, I asked her,
tell me about the first time he asked you for sex?
And she said, well, he said he wanted me and
I said, no, I have my husband. And I said,
I was trying to get a sense of oh, is
that just one time? And she was quiet and I
said was it more than one time? She said yeah.
(04:07):
I said was it more than ten times? She said
more than And I said was it more than fifty times?
And she was kind of squirming uncomfortably in her chair
and she said more than And I said, so, how
many times have you been asked for sex in order
to do your job? And she said every day.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Today on the show, an investigation into persistent worker abuse
at Sockfinn, one of the oldest rubber and palm oil
companies in Africa, Why it's been so hard to stop
and a new law that could give corporations like Sockfinn
a big incentive to reform. I'm Sarah Holder and this
is the big take from Bloomberg News. Bloomberg Sheridan Prosso
(04:59):
spoke to eight women like Rebecca, who say they face
repeated demands for sex in order to work at Sackfinn plantations,
and eight more people, including a retired school teacher and
community advocates, spoke on the record about hearing directly from
women who had similar experiences. Sheridan says complaints about sexual
harassment at Sackfinn sites have been surfacing for years.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
So, starting about a decade ago, some local engeos in
various countries, including Liberia and also in Sierra Leone started
publishing reports about bad conditions on these plantations, and they
brought those concerns to the management. Sackfinn said, well, there
(05:45):
haven't been any reports to the police, so it seems
like it maybe isn't true. And so for a long
time the company didn't take those allegations seriously because they
were applying kind of a Western lens to the idea
that if you were raped, you were coerced into sex,
or you had demands for sex by your supervisor on
(06:06):
a daily basis, as was reported to be happening there,
that you would go to the police. And that's not
what happens on a plantation in rural Africa.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
None of the eight women shared and spoke with filed
a formal complaint about the sex for work demands they faced.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
There aren't really police to go to that people have
access to to make complaints like that, and if you
do make a complaint, you lose your livelihood, you can't
feed your children, and so the repercussions that these women
have long faced for trying to come forward have allowed
the company for a long time to not really see
that there was a very deep and systematic problem at
(06:44):
many of its plantations.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Soffin has been producing rubber and palm oil since the
eighteen nineties. It got its start in the Belgian Congo
during the rule of King LEOPOLDI.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Soffin is one of the only legacy institutions, one of
the only producers of rubber and palm oil that's been
around since the colonial era and is still operating as
countries gained their independence all throughout the nineteen sixties. In
that era in Africa, it lost a lot of its holdings,
(07:16):
but then it started regaining and expanding them into the
nineteen nineties and two thousands, when there was a wave
of privatization across Africa and Sackfinn then acquired a whole
bunch of concessions that were suddenly being privatized and at
the same time countries recovering from civil wars that wanted
to bring in foreign investors.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Today, Sackfinn has two owners. One of them is Vonceanne Bollerat,
who is sometimes called the rupert Murdoch of France. His
fortune is worth about nine billion US dollars and through
his holding company Bollerrat Se, he's the largest shareholder in
the French media company Vivendi.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
It's a very large conglomerate and as part of the TV,
the radio and newspaper empire that he owns, he has
increasingly been pushing a kind of right wing ish conservative agenda.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Bollat is one of the wealthiest men in France and
through his holding company, he also owns about thirty five
percent of Sockfinn.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
And he has long maintained that because he's a minority owner,
he says he's not responsible for anything that Sackfinn does,
and he's not responsible for its daily management.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
That would be the other co owner.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
So the person who is responsible for its daily management
is Ubert Fabrie, and he is a Belgian businessman. His
father was connected to the original founders of the Suckfinn empire.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Fabri declined to be interviewed for the story, and a
spokesperson for Ballerat and for his holding company also declined
to comment. Nonprofits had been raising concerns about Sackfinn's labor
and environmental practices for years. In twenty sixteen, some of
Sackfinn's customers started pushing for reforms.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
And Nessley in particular started asking for Sockfinn to improve
some of its practices. So that pressure started happening from
consumer companies that realized that things were kind of changing
and that they also had to make sure that their
supply chains reflected kind of a broader commitment to sustainability
(09:27):
and good labor practices.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Sackfinn agreed to partner with a Swiss NGO called the
Earthworm Foundation to develop some social responsibility guidelines and assess
allegations of sexual abuse and other issues. Over the years,
more and more allegations came to light, and in twenty
twenty three, Earthworms started conducting audits, interviewing hundreds of workers
(09:51):
at eight Sackfinn plantations. At all of the plantations it audited.
Earthworm found credible evidence substantiating these allegations of sexual harassment,
and there were a lot of other problems too.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
So Sockfin has long faced allegations of paying workers poorly
and not equipping them fully with the productive equipment that
they need for their jobs, or deducting that equipment from
their pay. The company has recently conducted its own audits
to see if those allegations were true, and did find
that in some cases, workers were still working twelve hours
(10:26):
a day without overtime pay.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
At five plantations, Earthworm found evidence to support some, but
not all, allegations of labor rights and worker safety violations.
The company says it's been taking steps to remedy these issues.
Lawsuits and complaints have also accused Stockfinn of causing environmental damage.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Access to fresh drinking water is a problem in many
of those plantations, according to the audits that have been
done recently.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
The company has also faced allegations of appropriating farmland and
destroying villages without fully comb and saving the people the
company displaced.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
So there are still these outstanding issues about land, about labor,
about environmental issues, and definitely about sexual harassment. And even
allegations of rape.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Sackfin has not disputed Earthworm's findings. The company says it
has taken steps to address sexual harassment, including issuing a
series of action plants.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Things like put up a sign no sex for jobs,
or strengthen our sexual harassment training policy. And when I
visited the plantation in late twenty twenty four, people told
me that there had not been any improvement because putting
up a sign that says no sex for jobs, offering
(11:42):
more training on your sexual arrassment policy, or strengthening your
sexual harassment policy was not the solution to this systemic problem.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
A spokesperson for the company said in an email that
Sackfinn has obtained numerous environmental certifications and has quote a
deep seated commitment and drive to uphold the highest sustainability
standards coming up why a new EU law could soon
pressure Stockfin to change. In twenty twenty four, the European
(12:18):
Union passed a piece of landmark legislation. It was designed
to hold corporations accountable for environmental, labor and human rights
violations throughout their supply chains, and it has teeth when
it goes into effect in twenty twenty seven, it will
allow regulators to find violators more than five percent of
their annual revenue. For context, Sackfinn's revenue in twenty twenty
(12:42):
three was about a billion US dollars. That's the last
full year we have data for because the owners took
the company private last September. Bloomberg Sheridan Prosso says the
law could have profound effects on the power dynamics between
the companies that own rubber plantations and the people who
work on them.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
That's a whole game changer. This is the harshest law
that's ever been passed anywhere in the world, holding companies
accountable for what happens at the end of their supply chains,
anything that happens that affects people, that harms people at
the end of their supply chains, and that they can
be sued by the Rebeccas of Africa, by people in
(13:21):
Africa who can show direct harm from the company, either
negligently or willfully allowing these bad things to happen.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
How has that changed how customers of sackfin have reacted
to these kinds of reports and allegations.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
I think that the fact that all of the individual
countries of Europe have to put in place their own
measures that involve fines that involve potentially in the case
of deforestation import bands, the finds are pretty substantial, and
the threats of lawsuits are even more substantial. I think
it does seem that that is raising the sense of
urgency for the end suppliers that not just Sockfinn could
(14:02):
get sued under these new laws, but Michelin, Continental, Bridgetone
and potentially even Nesle could be sued too.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Nesli doesn't purchase products directly from Sckfinn anymore, but Sckfinn
palm oil is still part of its supply chain. What
have these companies said so far when you spoke to
them about what you found?
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Well, I mean Nesli says that they take a supplier
engagement seriously and they work with them to try to
establish best practices right and they for a long time
required their suppliers to be certified as environmentally sustainable.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Sheridan also asked tire company leaders for their reactions to
the sex for work demands at Sackfinn's plantations.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Michelin said, first of all, they said they were not
aware of the sex for work demands that was going
on at Sockfinn's plantation, even though they directly source from
lack in Liberia, and even though those audit results were published,
including the action plans for how to deal with it
were published on Sackfin's own website, but they said they
(15:05):
weren't aware, and if they were aware, the CEO of
Micheline told us we would of course not be sourcing
from the company that allows that to happen. In the
case of Bridgetone, though they said that they did know
and that they have been working with the company since
they found out to try to also improve its practices.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
But Sheridan says one of the issues she found in
her reporting is that action plans and best practices on
paper often failed to translate to change on the ground.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
One of the things in particular was they set up
something called gender committees, and the gender committee at each
plantation is supposed to take complaints from the women and
to try to figure out how to deal with issues
of allegations and investigate them and see if it's true. Well,
in the cases of the gender committee, the audits themselves
found that many of them were ineffective. They didn't have
(15:56):
office space, nobody knew how to contact them, they'd never
actually operate. They were just set up in name only.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
It's an open question whether the new EU law will
be able to change the long standing issues at Sackfinn plantations.
Have the advocates that you've spoken to, who have been
doing this work for a long time trying to raise awareness,
do they feel hopeful about that new urgency.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
First of all, twenty twenty seven is a little bit
of a ways away, and for the people who are
working to improve conditions right now on the ground in
twenty twenty five, two years of sex demands for Rebecca
are too long to wait.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
In the meantime, one plantation in Liberia has seen improvements,
but not by Sockfen. After Sackfin sold the Salala Rubber
Court plantation in August twenty twenty four, it's new owner
began addressing long standing worker complaints, including a lack of
safety equipment, medical resources, and generally poor living conditions on
(16:54):
their plantation.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
The new owner is an Indian businessman who has worked
in Liberia for a long time. He goes by.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
GT that's short for Upjets, saying such Diva, Such Diva
says he isn't aware of reports of sexual abuse or
harassment and hasn't read Earthworm's audits, but he also says
he's committed to Stockfinn's action plan.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
So gd came in and immediately made some improvements in
What he did was immediately renovate worker housing and then
he bought medical supplies for the clinic hospital clinic that
had been completely emptied of supplies. He ordered an ambulance.
He renovated the school for the worker's children, and he
(17:35):
started feeding the children of the eight hundred workers on
the plantation daily meals hot meals at school.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Has he taken any steps to address the systemic issues
that are behind the sex for work allegations.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
So one of the things he also did was he
changed the way that people are compensated, so instead of
having to meet a quota in order to get paid,
you get paid by how much you produce. So that
helped people not feel so drained as to try to
get so much work done, because part of the problem
is that in order to get that work done, men
were hiring women to do proofree chores for them.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Proof reachores like cleaning the cups used to collect latex
when it drips out of rubber trees.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
But sometimes the men would say, well, now you have
to have sex with me or else I'm not going
to pay you, And so that was common on the plantation.
So GD changed that system too, and he now employs
cup cleaners as actual employees and they get one hundred
dollars a month instead of fifteen or a demand for sex.
Another thing is that there was a kind of a
debt service that people who needed money for like an emergency,
(18:39):
and so he did away with that. If you need
money for medical emergency, you can get it for free
and then it just gets deducted from your pay without
a huge interest, right. So there were various things like
that he has done to try to improve the conditions
of the people. And I think one of the things
that becomes clear is that maybe just a few management
changes on some of these plantations could actually result in
(19:01):
just a much better working system of much better conditions
for other workers there.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
And did you get to talk to any of the
women post new leadership and did you hear about any
changes in their experiences of sexual harassment and abuse?
Speaker 2 (19:15):
When I visited the plantation in November, it had only
been reopened for a week, and since then there have
been some issues about unrest still, some people who didn't
get their jaws back who wanted them, or there's been
it's dry seasons, or there's been some wildfires, and so
the conditions now are a little bit too unstable, but
we'll have to see over the longer term whether it
(19:36):
makes a difference.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
This episode was produced by David Fox. It was edited
by Tracy Samuelson and Robert Friedman. It was fact checked
by Audrenatapia and mixed and sound designed by Alex Uguera.
Special thanks to Julianne Wilkinson and Henry Baker. Our senior
producer is Naomi Shaven and your editor is Elizabeth Ponso.
(20:02):
Our deputy executive producer is Julia Weaver. Our executive producer
is Nicole Beamster. Bar Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts.
If you liked this episode, make sure to subscribe and
review The Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It
helps people find the show. We'll be back tomorrow.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. This episode contains descriptions
of sexual exploitation and mentions of rape. Please take care
while listening. Last year, Bloomberg Sheridan Prosso went to visit
one of the biggest rubber plantations in Liberia.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
It is a very large plantation. The total areas double
the size of Chicago, and it's just rose and rose,
hundreds of rows of green rubber trees after rubber trees
in all in rows, all very symmetrical.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
It's called the Liberian Agricultural Company Plantation. It's one of
more than a dozen rubber and palm oil plantations in
Africa and Asia owned by the European company Sockfin. Sockfin
is far from the largest supplier of rubber and palm
oil in the world, but it's a major player in
parts of Africa.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
It is outsized and turned of its influence and in
terms of its importance in the countries and in those
economies where it operates. So, for example, in Liberia, it
is the number two producer of rubber behind firestone, and
rubber constitutes two thirds of the country's exports. So it's
a huge employer and hugely important for that country's economy.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Its palm oil winds up in products from food makers
like Nesley, and its rubber is bought by some of
the world's largest tire makers, including Continental, Bridgestone and Michelin.
The Sackfin plantation sheared and visited in Liberia produces about
twenty eight thousand metric tons of rubber every year. It
employs more than four thousand people, including a young woman
(01:44):
we'll call Rebecca. We're not going to tell you much
about Rebecca to protect her identity, but we can tell
you she's a mother of young children and she works
as a tapper.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
The tapper is somebody who goes around from tree to tree.
They cut the bark of the rubber tree. They put
little cup on the tree. Think about collecting maple syrup,
it's the same idea. It's latex that kind of drips
out from the tree, goes into a cup. They coagulate
that and dry it and turn that into natural rubber.
That's where rubber comes from.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Like many of her coworkers, Rebecca has lived on the
plantation her whole life. It's the only employer in the area,
and she depends on working there to survive.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
She grew up in an era where there were back
to back civil wars in Liberia. She doesn't have an education,
She doesn't have any money or any savings to be
able to go to a big city and get any
kind of other job and a restaurant or anything like that.
She doesn't even have the means to leave.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Full time employees of the plantation make five fifty a
day in US dollars, but Rebecca, like the majority of
people working there, is a contract worker, which means she
makes less money and has to pay more than full
time employees for food and school tuition for her children.
And she's also dependent on supervisor is choosing her for
(03:01):
work assignments each day.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Rebecca told me that when she turns up for work
in the morning, her supervisor says, you have to have
sex with me or you can't do your job today.
And sometimes she'll get a supervisor who doesn't ask that,
but there's more than one supervisor who does ask that,
and she's constantly, constantly just faced with the situation of
(03:27):
how do I feed my kids, how do I do
my job, and how do I fend off the advances
of this supervisor who keeps these supervisors more than one
who keep demanding that I have sex in order to
do my job?
Speaker 1 (03:41):
How often does this happen to her?
Speaker 2 (03:43):
When I was asking Rebecca these questions, I asked her,
tell me about the first time he asked you for sex?
And she said, well, he said he wanted me and
I said, no, I have my husband. And I said,
I was trying to get a sense of oh, is
that just one time? And she was quiet and I
said was it more than one time? She said yeah.
(04:07):
I said was it more than ten times? She said
more than And I said was it more than fifty times?
And she was kind of squirming uncomfortably in her chair
and she said more than And I said, so, how
many times have you been asked for sex in order
to do your job? And she said every day.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Today on the show, an investigation into persistent worker abuse
at Sockfinn, one of the oldest rubber and palm oil
companies in Africa, Why it's been so hard to stop
and a new law that could give corporations like Sockfinn
a big incentive to reform. I'm Sarah Holder and this
is the big take from Bloomberg News. Bloomberg Sheridan Prosso
(04:59):
spoke to eight women like Rebecca, who say they face
repeated demands for sex in order to work at Sackfinn plantations,
and eight more people, including a retired school teacher and
community advocates, spoke on the record about hearing directly from
women who had similar experiences. Sheridan says complaints about sexual
harassment at Sackfinn sites have been surfacing for years.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
So, starting about a decade ago, some local engeos in
various countries, including Liberia and also in Sierra Leone started
publishing reports about bad conditions on these plantations, and they
brought those concerns to the management. Sackfinn said, well, there
(05:45):
haven't been any reports to the police, so it seems
like it maybe isn't true. And so for a long
time the company didn't take those allegations seriously because they
were applying kind of a Western lens to the idea
that if you were raped, you were coerced into sex,
or you had demands for sex by your supervisor on
(06:06):
a daily basis, as was reported to be happening there,
that you would go to the police. And that's not
what happens on a plantation in rural Africa.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
None of the eight women shared and spoke with filed
a formal complaint about the sex for work demands they faced.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
There aren't really police to go to that people have
access to to make complaints like that, and if you
do make a complaint, you lose your livelihood, you can't
feed your children, and so the repercussions that these women
have long faced for trying to come forward have allowed
the company for a long time to not really see
that there was a very deep and systematic problem at
(06:44):
many of its plantations.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Soffin has been producing rubber and palm oil since the
eighteen nineties. It got its start in the Belgian Congo
during the rule of King LEOPOLDI.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Soffin is one of the only legacy institutions, one of
the only producers of rubber and palm oil that's been
around since the colonial era and is still operating as
countries gained their independence all throughout the nineteen sixties. In
that era in Africa, it lost a lot of its holdings,
(07:16):
but then it started regaining and expanding them into the
nineteen nineties and two thousands, when there was a wave
of privatization across Africa and Sackfinn then acquired a whole
bunch of concessions that were suddenly being privatized and at
the same time countries recovering from civil wars that wanted
to bring in foreign investors.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Today, Sackfinn has two owners. One of them is Vonceanne Bollerat,
who is sometimes called the rupert Murdoch of France. His
fortune is worth about nine billion US dollars and through
his holding company Bollerrat Se, he's the largest shareholder in
the French media company Vivendi.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
It's a very large conglomerate and as part of the TV,
the radio and newspaper empire that he owns, he has
increasingly been pushing a kind of right wing ish conservative agenda.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Bollat is one of the wealthiest men in France and
through his holding company, he also owns about thirty five
percent of Sockfinn.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
And he has long maintained that because he's a minority owner,
he says he's not responsible for anything that Sackfinn does,
and he's not responsible for its daily management.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
That would be the other co owner.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
So the person who is responsible for its daily management
is Ubert Fabrie, and he is a Belgian businessman. His
father was connected to the original founders of the Suckfinn empire.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Fabri declined to be interviewed for the story, and a
spokesperson for Ballerat and for his holding company also declined
to comment. Nonprofits had been raising concerns about Sackfinn's labor
and environmental practices for years. In twenty sixteen, some of
Sackfinn's customers started pushing for reforms.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
And Nessley in particular started asking for Sockfinn to improve
some of its practices. So that pressure started happening from
consumer companies that realized that things were kind of changing
and that they also had to make sure that their
supply chains reflected kind of a broader commitment to sustainability
(09:27):
and good labor practices.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Sackfinn agreed to partner with a Swiss NGO called the
Earthworm Foundation to develop some social responsibility guidelines and assess
allegations of sexual abuse and other issues. Over the years,
more and more allegations came to light, and in twenty
twenty three, Earthworms started conducting audits, interviewing hundreds of workers
(09:51):
at eight Sackfinn plantations. At all of the plantations it audited.
Earthworm found credible evidence substantiating these allegations of sexual harassment,
and there were a lot of other problems too.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
So Sockfin has long faced allegations of paying workers poorly
and not equipping them fully with the productive equipment that
they need for their jobs, or deducting that equipment from
their pay. The company has recently conducted its own audits
to see if those allegations were true, and did find
that in some cases, workers were still working twelve hours
(10:26):
a day without overtime pay.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
At five plantations, Earthworm found evidence to support some, but
not all, allegations of labor rights and worker safety violations.
The company says it's been taking steps to remedy these issues.
Lawsuits and complaints have also accused Stockfinn of causing environmental damage.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Access to fresh drinking water is a problem in many
of those plantations, according to the audits that have been
done recently.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
The company has also faced allegations of appropriating farmland and
destroying villages without fully comb and saving the people the
company displaced.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
So there are still these outstanding issues about land, about labor,
about environmental issues, and definitely about sexual harassment. And even
allegations of rape.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Sackfin has not disputed Earthworm's findings. The company says it
has taken steps to address sexual harassment, including issuing a
series of action plants.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Things like put up a sign no sex for jobs,
or strengthen our sexual harassment training policy. And when I
visited the plantation in late twenty twenty four, people told
me that there had not been any improvement because putting
up a sign that says no sex for jobs, offering
(11:42):
more training on your sexual arrassment policy, or strengthening your
sexual harassment policy was not the solution to this systemic problem.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
A spokesperson for the company said in an email that
Sackfinn has obtained numerous environmental certifications and has quote a
deep seated commitment and drive to uphold the highest sustainability
standards coming up why a new EU law could soon
pressure Stockfin to change. In twenty twenty four, the European
(12:18):
Union passed a piece of landmark legislation. It was designed
to hold corporations accountable for environmental, labor and human rights
violations throughout their supply chains, and it has teeth when
it goes into effect in twenty twenty seven, it will
allow regulators to find violators more than five percent of
their annual revenue. For context, Sackfinn's revenue in twenty twenty
(12:42):
three was about a billion US dollars. That's the last
full year we have data for because the owners took
the company private last September. Bloomberg Sheridan Prosso says the
law could have profound effects on the power dynamics between
the companies that own rubber plantations and the people who
work on them.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
That's a whole game changer. This is the harshest law
that's ever been passed anywhere in the world, holding companies
accountable for what happens at the end of their supply chains,
anything that happens that affects people, that harms people at
the end of their supply chains, and that they can
be sued by the Rebeccas of Africa, by people in
(13:21):
Africa who can show direct harm from the company, either
negligently or willfully allowing these bad things to happen.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
How has that changed how customers of sackfin have reacted
to these kinds of reports and allegations.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
I think that the fact that all of the individual
countries of Europe have to put in place their own
measures that involve fines that involve potentially in the case
of deforestation import bands, the finds are pretty substantial, and
the threats of lawsuits are even more substantial. I think
it does seem that that is raising the sense of
urgency for the end suppliers that not just Sockfinn could
(14:02):
get sued under these new laws, but Michelin, Continental, Bridgetone
and potentially even Nesle could be sued too.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Nesli doesn't purchase products directly from Sckfinn anymore, but Sckfinn
palm oil is still part of its supply chain. What
have these companies said so far when you spoke to
them about what you found?
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Well, I mean Nesli says that they take a supplier
engagement seriously and they work with them to try to
establish best practices right and they for a long time
required their suppliers to be certified as environmentally sustainable.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Sheridan also asked tire company leaders for their reactions to
the sex for work demands at Sackfinn's plantations.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Michelin said, first of all, they said they were not
aware of the sex for work demands that was going
on at Sockfinn's plantation, even though they directly source from
lack in Liberia, and even though those audit results were published,
including the action plans for how to deal with it
were published on Sackfin's own website, but they said they
(15:05):
weren't aware, and if they were aware, the CEO of
Micheline told us we would of course not be sourcing
from the company that allows that to happen. In the
case of Bridgetone, though they said that they did know
and that they have been working with the company since
they found out to try to also improve its practices.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
But Sheridan says one of the issues she found in
her reporting is that action plans and best practices on
paper often failed to translate to change on the ground.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
One of the things in particular was they set up
something called gender committees, and the gender committee at each
plantation is supposed to take complaints from the women and
to try to figure out how to deal with issues
of allegations and investigate them and see if it's true. Well,
in the cases of the gender committee, the audits themselves
found that many of them were ineffective. They didn't have
(15:56):
office space, nobody knew how to contact them, they'd never
actually operate. They were just set up in name only.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
It's an open question whether the new EU law will
be able to change the long standing issues at Sackfinn plantations.
Have the advocates that you've spoken to, who have been
doing this work for a long time trying to raise awareness,
do they feel hopeful about that new urgency.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
First of all, twenty twenty seven is a little bit
of a ways away, and for the people who are
working to improve conditions right now on the ground in
twenty twenty five, two years of sex demands for Rebecca
are too long to wait.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
In the meantime, one plantation in Liberia has seen improvements,
but not by Sockfen. After Sackfin sold the Salala Rubber
Court plantation in August twenty twenty four, it's new owner
began addressing long standing worker complaints, including a lack of
safety equipment, medical resources, and generally poor living conditions on
(16:54):
their plantation.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
The new owner is an Indian businessman who has worked
in Liberia for a long time. He goes by.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
GT that's short for Upjets, saying such Diva, Such Diva
says he isn't aware of reports of sexual abuse or
harassment and hasn't read Earthworm's audits, but he also says
he's committed to Stockfinn's action plan.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
So gd came in and immediately made some improvements in
What he did was immediately renovate worker housing and then
he bought medical supplies for the clinic hospital clinic that
had been completely emptied of supplies. He ordered an ambulance.
He renovated the school for the worker's children, and he
(17:35):
started feeding the children of the eight hundred workers on
the plantation daily meals hot meals at school.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Has he taken any steps to address the systemic issues
that are behind the sex for work allegations.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
So one of the things he also did was he
changed the way that people are compensated, so instead of
having to meet a quota in order to get paid,
you get paid by how much you produce. So that
helped people not feel so drained as to try to
get so much work done, because part of the problem
is that in order to get that work done, men
were hiring women to do proofree chores for them.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Proof reachores like cleaning the cups used to collect latex
when it drips out of rubber trees.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
But sometimes the men would say, well, now you have
to have sex with me or else I'm not going
to pay you, And so that was common on the plantation.
So GD changed that system too, and he now employs
cup cleaners as actual employees and they get one hundred
dollars a month instead of fifteen or a demand for sex.
Another thing is that there was a kind of a
debt service that people who needed money for like an emergency,
(18:39):
and so he did away with that. If you need
money for medical emergency, you can get it for free
and then it just gets deducted from your pay without
a huge interest, right. So there were various things like
that he has done to try to improve the conditions
of the people. And I think one of the things
that becomes clear is that maybe just a few management
changes on some of these plantations could actually result in
(19:01):
just a much better working system of much better conditions
for other workers there.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
And did you get to talk to any of the
women post new leadership and did you hear about any
changes in their experiences of sexual harassment and abuse?
Speaker 2 (19:15):
When I visited the plantation in November, it had only
been reopened for a week, and since then there have
been some issues about unrest still, some people who didn't
get their jaws back who wanted them, or there's been
it's dry seasons, or there's been some wildfires, and so
the conditions now are a little bit too unstable, but
we'll have to see over the longer term whether it
(19:36):
makes a difference.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
This episode was produced by David Fox. It was edited
by Tracy Samuelson and Robert Friedman. It was fact checked
by Audrenatapia and mixed and sound designed by Alex Uguera.
Special thanks to Julianne Wilkinson and Henry Baker. Our senior
producer is Naomi Shaven and your editor is Elizabeth Ponso.
(20:02):
Our deputy executive producer is Julia Weaver. Our executive producer
is Nicole Beamster. Bar Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts.
If you liked this episode, make sure to subscribe and
review The Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It
helps people find the show. We'll be back tomorrow.
Hosts And Creators
Sarah Holder
Saleha Mohsin
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