by James Parks, Feb 3, 2008

While Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are pounding out the hits at the Bridgestone Firestone Super Bowl XLII halftime show today in Arizona, half a world away, 4,000 workers will be pounding at the bark of rubber trees in the hot African sun, pulling out the raw materials that will make millions for the tire maker. 

Bridgestone Firestone executives will be in the stands, where tickets start at $700 and skyboxes cost $165,000—yet these workers whose labor makes the money will take home $3.19 a day—less than the cost of a beer at the football game. 

Since 1926, Bridgestone Firestone has operated the world’s largest rubber plantation in Liberia, with widespread child labor, widespread abuse of workers’ rights and environmental damage, according to activists with the Stop Firestone Coalition. United Steelworkers (USW) and the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center found horrid living conditions on the plantation.

Workers at the plantation, located in Harbel—named for the tire maker’s founder Harvey Firestone, and his wife, Idabelle—earn a little more than $3 a day, and then only if they meet a burdensome quota. They are forced to carry heavy loads of rubber in metal pails on their backs and walk for miles to weighing stations. They live in shacks with no electricity, no running water or sanitary bathroom facilities. Their children have no access to a high school education. 

The coalition, which includes U.S. and Liberia-based human rights, labor and environmental groups, is calling on Bridgestone Firestone to stop exploiting workers and the environment and to negotiate a fair contract with the newly elected union leaders on the plantation.  

For the first time in 81 years, the more than 4,000 workers at the plantation in Liberia now are in control of their own union. In late December, the Liberian Supreme Court ruled the July election that threw out the officials of the longtime company-controlled union was a legitimate election.

International election observers, including the USW and Solidarity Center, certified the election—but a small group of officials from the discredited company union challenged the results.

 While the case was before the court, Firestone refused to bargain with the union, and on Dec. 6, the workers staged a strike demanding recognition of their union.  

Says USW President Leo Gerard: 

This ruling is a landmark victory for democratic and independent unions and provides Firestone workers with an opportunity to bargain with management to obtain much-needed improvements in wages, health care, safety and educational opportunities. 

The USW, which represents Bridgestone Firestone workers in the United States, has supported the Liberian workers for the past two years through training programs, workshops and education in partnership with the Solidarity Center. 

Alfred Brownell, director of the Liberia-based Green Advocates says

the cost of sponsoring the Super Bowl [halftime show] would go a long way to fix the problems on Firestone’s plantations in Liberia.  

Bridgestone has an agreement to sponsor the halftime show at next year’s Super Bowl as well. Emira Woods, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus, a project of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Policy Studies, called on National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell to revoke Bridgestone Firestone’s sponsorship of next year’s halftime show. 

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