Chocolate has been flagged as a sweet industry that’s acquiring a sour reputation for its pervasive use of forced and child labour.  Over 109,000 children work under atrocious conditions in the cocoa industry of the Ivory Coast, and an estimated 10,000 of these children are enslaved.  With Ghana and the Ivory Coast producing around 70% of the world’s cocoa beans, it is more than likely that each of us has consumed chocolate produced at the expense of a child’s freedom. 

It is important to recognize Hershey’s first step, but our goal is to have Hershey’s be a leader in child-labor-free chocolate instead of just barely keeping pace with its competitors.  This is a company that has built its reputation on caring for children and communities – and we will continue to push Hershey’s to be a leader in caring for West African cocoa kids too!

While we support Hershey’s move toward accountability, its partnership with Rainforest Alliance also presents several concerns:

The reinstatement of the union leaders is also significant to international solidarity efforts, as it is a testament to our power to successfully support workers’ organizing for their rights.  After the International Labor Rights Forum called on its supporters to take action, nearly 5000 people sent letters to Gildan.  These actions, combined with the Worker Rights Consortium’s report— that documented the ways that the dismissal of SOTA-union leaders violated laws and university codes, and that recommended reinstatement of the workers as an urgent priority—have shown SOTA and its supporters that they are not alone.

Founded in 1941, PAL and its unionized workforce have a 65 year history of working together collaboratively to ensure the company’s success. In fact, to help PAL recover from the 1997 Asian financial crisis, its workers agreed to suspend their collective bargaining agreement and accept across the board salary and benefit freezes for more than a decade. To reward its employees' loyalty and sacrifice, in 2009 PAL management announced it would implement a “fire and rehire” outsourcing scheme that would slash workers’ salaries and benefits in violation of the collective bargaining agreement PAL has signed with its workers. The scheme, announced during a routine meeting with elected union leaders, would have allowed the company to illegally fire more than 3,500