Is the NFL on the right team?
The Super Bowl is perhaps the last cultural event that unites a majority of Americans. Whether the game is a thriller or a snooze, Super Bowl Sunday is a day to gather with friends, rate the commercials, assess the halftime show and wear pants with elastic waistlines.
On Feb. 3, though, pay close attention to the halftime show. Tom Petty is performing, which means that any wardrobe malfunction could lead to the fall of Western civilization.
The show also stands to be a commercial bonanza for its sponsor, Bridgestone/Firestone. The Fortune 500 company has been crowned the "Official Tire Sponsor" of Super Bowl XLII and Super Bowl XLIII. As John Gamauf, an executive with the company, said, the sponsorship "is an unprecedented opportunity to showcase the Bridgestone brand to the world."
Peter Murray, the National Football League's senior vice president of partnership marketing and sales, chimed in: "By teaming with a global leader like Bridgestone, we can make America's favorite event even more powerful."
But NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell might want to be more careful about who the league cozies up to, especially when the partner is known in some parts of the globe not for high-velocity tires but for highly exploitative labor practices.
The rubber business has historically been horrific for African workers, known as tappers, who collect sap from rubber trees on plantations south of the Sahara. The labor practices of the Firestone Natural Rubber Co., a subsidiary of Bridgestone/Firestone, in Liberia seem in keeping with this history.
For 81 years, the company has operated a plantation in Harbel, a company town in the truest sense. Its very name comes from founder Harvey Firestone and his wife, Idabelle. The town received its name after Firestone signed a 99-year lease with the Liberian government in 1926 that gave his company access to 1 million acres of land on which rubber trees grow. The sap -- known as latex -- collected on the plantation is shipped to the Bridgestone/Firestone plant in Nashville, where it is used to make tires, among other goods
According to a 2005 lawsuit filed by the International Labor Rights Fund, a Washington-based advocacy organization, Bridgestone/Firestone allegedly overworks, underpays and exposes its 4,000 Liberian employees to hazardous chemicals and pesticides. Its subsidiary also oversees what has been called de facto slavery.
