Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt

Regarding the legal merits of the case, I notice that don&#x27;t see any coverage of a proposed theory of liability in the article. The lawsuit text is more informative, pointing at a bunch of sections of US Code about forced labor, trafficking, and sale into voluntary servitude — for instance, 18 U.S. Code § 1589 which notes, &quot;(b) Whoever knowingly benefits, financially or by receiving anything of value, from participation in a venture which has engaged in the providing or obtaining of labor or services by any of the means described in subsection (a), knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that the venture has engaged in the providing or obtaining of labor or services by any of such means, shall be punished as provided in subsection (d).&quot;<p>But I&#x27;m not at all certain the court is willing consider the purchase of goods on the world market to be equivalent to &quot;participation&quot; in this venture, even if the suit asserts that &quot;The Cobalt Supply Chain Is a “Venture”&quot;. Is there meaningful precedent for interpreting a supply chain in this way?

I found this is very insightful thread on this lawsuit and context behind it: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.twitter.com&#x2F;enn_nafnlaus&#x2F;status&#x2F;1206896495993278464" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.twitter.com&#x2F;enn_nafnlaus&#x2F;status&#x2F;1206896495993...</a><p>0) lawyers suing have questionable history<p>BUT 1) Child labor in Africa is a serious problem that needs to be addressed, and just about anything sourced from Africa will have this problem.<p>2) The Kamoto mine in question is a copper mine. Cobalt is a secondary product. (One could just about as legitimately call attention to products using copper.)<p>3) Tesla is targeted in the lawsuit but does not use Congolese cobalt.<p>4) Possible exception to this is some possible future Tesla cells could come from LGChem which gets some of its lithium from Umicore. However, LGChem is the primary supplier of cells for GM and several other EV producers... Yet they are not named in this lawsuit.<p>5) Kamoto is a modern industrial mine. Artisanal mines are where child labor is used. Unskilled child labor is of dubious use in highly mechanized industrial mining sites.<p>6) However, Kamoto <i>has</i> had problems with pirate artisanal mines on its property and has tried to get the Congolese army to help keep them out. (So I guess the lawsuit would be that Kamoto has not been able to keep out illegal artisanal mines from its property?)<p>7) Regardless of all these points, we NEED to stop this dangerous child labor in Africa, and it&#x27;s probably a good thing that this sort of thing is drawing attention to the issue.<p>(Note, I&#x27;m mentioning Tesla here because I&#x27;m most familiar with it and it&#x27;s also mentioned most in the thread, but it&#x27;s possible similar arguments apply to other companies listed: It seems they&#x27;re listed because they&#x27;re well-known, large tech companies, not necessarily due to amount of cobalt use or even use of unethical cobalt at all.)

&gt;Perhaps the only tragedy greater than the criminal destruction of the environment and the lives of the people of the Congo by these companies is the fact that it would be a rounding error on their income statements to fix the problem.<p>Eh, I don&#x27;t think giving more money to the third world mining companies is going to guarantee they&#x27;re going to stop using child labor. The simplest and least risky decision for the tech companies is to simply stop buying Congolese cobalt. It&#x27;s &quot;blood diamonds&quot; all over again.

I like how people get outraged at US tech giants but gracefully ignore the fact that Glencore which actually is the beneficiary of exploiting the children is based in Europe. It&#x27;s no small target either with annual revenue of 219.8 billion in 2018 vs Google&#x27;s 136.

Interesting they don&#x27;t sue diesel producers, consumers, or makers of diesel vehicles. One of the largest uses of cobalt is desulphurisation of diesel: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cobaltinstitute.org&#x2F;desulphurisation.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cobaltinstitute.org&#x2F;desulphurisation.html</a><p>Also interesting they included Tesla who has consistently used ethically sourced Cobalt (and others who have campaigned for ethical cobalt have acknowledged this).<p>I suspect folks commenting here are right that this is a publicity stunt.<p>EDIT: One good that could come from this publicity stunt, though, is more focus on the legitimate problem of child labor in Africa.

This feels like the episode of the The Good Place where they figure out the point system to get to the good place doesn&#x27;t work because today&#x27;s world is complicated...<p>&gt;Michael uses the example of someone buying roses. A man hundreds of years ago got a lot of Good Place points because he grew and picked his own roses to give to his grandmother. However, when another man got roses for his grandmother, he lost points. It’s because he ordered them through a cell phone that was made in a sweatshop, the flowers were grown with toxic pesticides, delivered from thousands of miles away creating a large carbon footprint and the money went to a greedy CEO that sexually harassed women.

Ignoring the overall ethical issue for those employing the child laborers and looking purely at the lawsuit, it seems to have no merit and appears to be designed specifically to create a bad PR campaign for these companies and to draw attention to the issue. I suspect more drawing of attention than the bad PR, but still probably both are goals.<p>IANAL, but it seems very obvious from both the article and the lawsuit that there is no foundation to this. The article acknowledges this is essentially new ground, but it doesn&#x27;t even seem to be based on anything legal at all. Looking at the actual complaint (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;iradvocates.org&#x2F;sites&#x2F;iradvocates.org&#x2F;files&#x2F;stamped%20-Complaint.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;iradvocates.org&#x2F;sites&#x2F;iradvocates.org&#x2F;files&#x2F;stamped%2...</a>) it is very telling that in a 79 page suit barely over 2 pages is related to &quot;jurisdiction and venue&quot;. That is a major component of this case, in addition to the totally untested claims being attempted here in this case. Having barely over 2 pages sort of tells you right off the bat that they know this is seriously thin.<p>Moving to the actual claim, they assert the US court is appropriate based on 18 U.S. Code § 1596. That seems reasonable based on the text. So moving along to the complaints, they claim violations of 18 U.S. Code § 1581, § 1584, § 1589, and § 1590.<p>1581 and 1584 very clearly and in no uncertain language apply directly to the people employing and controlling the labor itself. This is just a bad faith claim in my opinion and should be tossed out <i>with</i> prejudice.<p>1589 deals with those who benefit from such activity, which is where we start to see some semblance of sanity from this lawsuit. However, the language clearly indicates that it must be a &quot;venture&quot;. This usually means direct agreements, shared ownership, etc. That is not the case in how these tech companies are acquiring these materials so toss that one out as well, unless of course you are prepared to accept that the open market and global supply chain is a venture. Which would then, by logical extension, include anyone and everyone operating on the entirety of the supply chain and market.<p>1590 reverts back to the same position as 1581 and 1584, dealing directly with those who have direct control over said labor. Again, toss this out <i>with</i> prejudice.<p>The whole lawsuit is crap as far as I&#x27;m concerned. Even a basic reading of the law shows that this suit is trash, regardless of good intentions or not. The only chance in hell they have is somehow convincing the court that Google, Apple, Dell, etc. are <i>all</i> working together in a fiendishly evil &quot;venture&quot; and that they all have direct control over this child labor. Good luck with that.<p>Honestly, if I were the judge, I&#x27;d throw this entire lawsuit in the trash and force the plaintiff(s) to pay the defense fees, if they had requested it via counter-suit.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&#x2F;uscode&#x2F;text&#x2F;18&#x2F;1581" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&#x2F;uscode&#x2F;text&#x2F;18&#x2F;1581</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&#x2F;uscode&#x2F;text&#x2F;18&#x2F;1584" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&#x2F;uscode&#x2F;text&#x2F;18&#x2F;1584</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&#x2F;uscode&#x2F;text&#x2F;18&#x2F;1589" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&#x2F;uscode&#x2F;text&#x2F;18&#x2F;1589</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&#x2F;uscode&#x2F;text&#x2F;18&#x2F;1590" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&#x2F;uscode&#x2F;text&#x2F;18&#x2F;1590</a>

I&#x27;m surprised they have a problem. The likes of GM is well known to trace their supply chain down as many levels as required to ensure this doesn&#x27;t exist. GM has already faced this nightmare (I&#x27;m not sure if they were sued, or just got tired of protests) and takes care to ensure that they know who buys what from who all the way down. GM isn&#x27;t a big tech buyer, but they are big enough to be worth changing your practices so you can sell to them. GM isn&#x27;t the only company as well, just one that I know of from publicly available information.

The structural issue is abstraction caused by complicated supply chains. The public interface is what the consumer can easily see about the product like the user experience, branding, and the final purchase price, but it&#x27;s supported by lots of hidden infrastructure associated the manufacture of every part embedded into the product, along with any services provided supporting the user experience.<p>Labeling laws are one way to try to make the hidden details of implementation public at the cost of more complex decision-making for consumers. Sometimes large companies can police the supply chain themselves, so that from a consumer perspective, avoiding exploitation becomes part of the brand.<p>A carbon tax attempts to bundle climate change costs into prices without changing the public API at all. This seems like the most thorough way to make sure every buyer at all levels of the supply chain takes this environmental cost into account in their decision-making, whether they are specifically thinking about it or not.<p>So it seems the best way to avoid this issue would be for cobalt based on child labor to be unavailable for purchase and a second-best way would be to make sure it&#x27;s more expensive so that buyers within the supply chain will automatically avoid that dependency.<p>When we get to the point where consumers need to step in and do the decision-making because nobody else will then this is probably the most inefficient way to do it, but it seems the supply chain won&#x27;t do it unless they are pushed into it?

Cobalt and tantalum are truly the Achilles heel of industrial economies.<p>No cobalt - no lithium batteries, and no mobile gadgets<p>No tantalum - no high spec capacitors omnipresent in compact power supplies, thus again no high value electronics as such unless you want to put huge electrolytic caps into your smartphone.

Do we all feel better blaming the tech companies for this than blaming ourselves, the customers of the tech companies?

There&#x27;s a mining-friendly city in Ontario literally named Cobalt where there are believed to be large deposits of the mineral. Let&#x27;s not pretend these companies don&#x27;t have any other option than to go through DRC for their supply.

Aside from the obvious issue that the tech giants do not directly employee these children (E.G they are employed by a supplier), what other issues come to mind?

Using that logic they might as well sue every American who buys products with Cobalt because they &quot;force&quot; tech companies to provide them with it.

The unfortunate thing about this whole situation is that, much like the conflict diamond issue, whether or not these companies are directly responsible due to this specific industry, it is merely a reflection of the terrible state of affairs and human rights in these countries. And stopping mining probably wouldn&#x27;t improve things much.<p>Even if these companies (or we as consumers) were to stop doing business and pull out of these mining industries, the conflict and suffering in such countries would simply move to some other industry. The people and children would be toiling in agriculture, fishing, maybe piracy, or slave trade. And I do not delude myself to think that the supervisors in those industries are much more charitable than in mining.<p>While fixing the problems of mining should be done, the underlying root causes of kids having to mine cobalt would not disappear. So think more deliberately about whether band-aiding this one symptom will let you wake up with a clear conscience tomorrow.

&gt; The lawsuit accuses those companies of &quot;knowingly benefiting from and aiding and abetting the cruel and brutal use of young children.&quot; It has not been tested in court.<p>Might as well sue the end users too, if that&#x27;s a viable theory.

Fair is fair: if tech giants are culpable, so is anyone with a smart phone. We must all cast the first stone at ourselves.

Maybe tax the crap out of newly mined&#x2F;imported coltan and institute a robust elecronics recycling program.

G Corp<p>Glencore 2018 Annual report: &#x27;the recent appearance of excess levels of uranium in the cobalt hydroxide being produced at Katanga&#x27; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;goo.gl&#x2F;maps&#x2F;g3VS4pfhS49eduVf8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;goo.gl&#x2F;maps&#x2F;g3VS4pfhS49eduVf8</a>

Ban all trade with countries that use child labor and forced labor, simple as that.

Why do countries allow their workers to be abused?

Slap a tariff or tax on Cobalt based products coming in. Use the money to rescue to slave families from their captors. Use force if necessary. Freedom from slavery everywhere.

Only american tech is being sued.

I will be avoiding buying new Lion battery products for foreseeable future

I highly doubt these companies are directly hiring or managing Cobalt miners. You might as well also sue anybody who uses a computer. This is purely a publicity stunt; it will get thrown out immediately.

It&#x27;s about time tech giants take responsibility for the blood minerals they use.<p>You can save people&#x27;s lives by using the Fairphone already. It&#x27;s free of those.

Then the law needs to change.<p>It&#x27;s unconscionable for this to be happening. You make the buyers of that cobalt start caring, you&#x27;ll make the producers of that cobalt start caring.

I feel like this is essentially trying to sue capitalism. Of course most raw materials people get is essentially sourced from exploitation. That&#x27;s just the result of buying for the cheapest cost.<p>People don&#x27;t like seeing how the sausage gets made, like the John Oliver segment on children making clothes, if they shut this down it will just pop up again with another company...

Congo produces 2&#x2F;3rds of the worlds Cobalt. It really doesn&#x27;t matter if Apple, Microsoft, Dell, Tesla and Google admit they used child labour.... They have.<p>Instead of levelling skepticism at the lawsuit, why not level skepticism at the companies with a collective market cap of ~$2 trillion? Doesn&#x27;t that seem more constructive?<p>There&#x27;s a real failure of imagination in these comments. Working conditions can and have been improved by advocacy. Saying child labour is an inevitable outcome of capitalism is the same argument that was made by slave owners in the south and Industrialists in Britain at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. You&#x27;re wrong.