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. 

In April of 2011, the U.S. and Colombian governments announced the signing of the “Labor Action Plan,” in an effort to address concerns about impunity for labor rights violations in Colombia.   While far from a comprehensive reform plan, the Action Plan did create benchmarks in key areas, including hiring additional labor inspectors, enhanced protections for union leaders facing death threats, and closing gaps in Colombian laws that allow employers to use “labor cooperatives” to avoid the legal responsibilities of a direct employment relationship.  

Years ago, the disparity between workers’ wagers and company profits was not quite so huge. International competition has pressured companies to demand more and more of each worker, without increasing their wages. Retired agronomist Alberto Caro who once owned a share in a flower farm chose not to succumb. He told Farthing, “I sold because I could see that as international competition grew we would be forced to squeeze our workers harder and harder.”

According to the workers on strike, the workers at Riegel have not been paid their social security for the past 11 months, in spite of the amount for social security being deducted from their wages. Event though the company paid part of the wages owed in response to the first week of the strike, many other workers have not received any compensation, including the workers leading the resistance. Workers are also owed their family subsidies and were not given their uniforms and appropriate working attire during their time at Riegel. Magdalena Toscano has worked for two CTAs. Under a plastic man-made shack put up by the strikers, she tells me in her previous job she worked for five months and was never paid.