Two prominent union leaders remain in prison a month after the headquarters of the Salala Rubber Corporation in Liberia was set on fire by aggrieved rubber tappers. The pair are among 60 workers who were named in an indictment seen by Mongabay. Along with another union official, they stand charged with conspiracy to commit a series of crimes, including arson. The three have been jailed for more than three weeks along with six other workers from the plantation. Salala is the Liberian subsidiary of the Belgian-French agricultural conglomerate Socfin, which operates rubber and oil palm plantations across West and Central Africa. The incident occurred on June 27 amid a campaign by the workers’ union to obtain a collective bargaining agreement that would guarantee better housing conditions, medical care for work-related injuries, a reduction in harvesting quotas, and other improvements. In mid-June, workers staged a five-day strike action in which they refused to work on the plantation. Salala’s management agreed to address some of the union’s demands, but said they would not pay the workers for the days they spent on strike. The refusal spurred some rubber tappers to ransack Salala’s headquarters, which were set on fire along with the private residence of the plantation’s manager, who was briefly detained by workers before being freed by company security. According to the Liberian government, more than $275,000 of company property was destroyed in the incident. A photo of the house of Salala Rubber Company’s manager after it was burned on June 27,…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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