Friday, Feb. 6, 2004 | 11:12 a.m.
Chocolate giant Mars Inc. says it is doing its part to eliminate child and slave labor in the farming of African cocoa -- but activists disagree and are taking the issue to the Las Vegas Strip.
Hoping to capitalize on the interest in chocolate on Valentine's Day, the protesters, led by San Francisco-based labor rights organization Global Exchange and the Nevada AFL-CIO, plan a Feb. 13 rally in front of Mars' M&M's World store on the Las Vegas Strip.
Organizers hope about 100 people will participate in the rally. The rally will also include students from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; members of the Las Vegas chapter of the Mexican American Political Association; and members of the labor group Las Vegas Catholic Worker.
Global Exchange's Valerie Orth, an organizer of the rally, said on the same day activists will try to meet with Mars managers to discuss the issue at Mars' McLean, Va., headquarters and at a Chicago factory.
Orth said the group doesn't plan to demonstrate at the factory of Mars subsidiary Ethel M Chocolates in Henderson.
The M&M's World store was targeted by the protesters because of its visibility.
"Las Vegas is so important because it's the only (Mars) retail store in the entire country," Orth said.
The group is demanding that Mars start purchasing 5 percent of its cocoa from Fair Trade sources. Global Exchange says the certification process is done by nonprofit organizations in 17 countries affiliated with another group, Fairtrade Labeling Organizations International. The Fair Trade cocoa system benefits more than 42,000 farmers in eight cooperatives in eight countries, Global Exchange said.
"If Mars was really serious about labor standards, they would buy Fair Trade. With Fair Trade you have minimum prices and it prohibits child labor. The farmers that are in Fair Trade cooperatives are organized into democratic cooperatives, they have the right to unionize and there's a voice given to workers," Orth said.
Liliana Esposito, a spokeswoman for Mars subsidiary Masterfoods USA, said the company is very interested in ensuring child labor is not a part of the cocoa farming industry. She said the company is involved in an international agreement among chocolate companies, labor organizations and nonprofit labor rights groups to ensure cocoa farmers have better working conditions, make more money, and to ensure cocoa isn't produced with child or slave labor.
"The protocol was an agreement to set out specific timelines from 2001 to 2005 to certify that the production of cocoa was done without child labor. We've exceeded the timeline of the protocol," she said.
Esposito said the company is addressing the issue of labor abuses in the cocoa industry through the agreement, but not through the Fair Trade system.
"As far as the Fair Trade movement, we very much share their goals. We are just taking a different route to what we think is the same destination. We don't think Fair Trade is the best way to address the issue. We think the protocol is a more comprehensive approach. We don't have any intention of entering a Fair Trade agreement," Esposito said.
Mars operates in more than 100 countries and does about $15 billion in sales annually, Esposito said. The company has about 250 employees in Nevada, with about a dozen Ethel M Chocolates retail stores in the Las Vegas area, the Ethel M Chocolates factory in Henderson and the M&M's World store.
The chocolate industry has made efforts to support the International Labor Organization Convention 182, a treaty that calls for the elimination of child labor and has been ratified by 93 countries since 1999, Esposito said.
Still, Orth said two-thirds of the world's cocoa comes from West Africa and the Ivory Coast, where the State Department and the International Labor Organization have reported widespread use of child labor on cocoa farms. Workers there earn a little as $30 to $108 a year, and children are sold into farming slavery there, Global Exchange said.
Danny Thompson, executive secretary-treasurer of the Nevada AFL-CIO, said his organization is involved in the demonstration to support efforts to eliminate the abuse of workers globally. He said companies leave the United States and put American workers out of jobs because they can go to countries in West Africa and to Mexico and China and use child, slave and prisoner labor.
"Our government is all too interested in the global market, but American workers can't compete for pennies on the dollar. It's a race to the bottom and eventually it's going to ruin our standard of living," he said.
He said although the Ethel M Chocolates stores, the M&M's World store and the Ethel M Chocolates factory are not unionized, that is not the reason the AFL-CIO is involved in the protest.
"This is not us trying to organize. As a matter of fact, there are no plans to do that," Thompson said.
Nevada Labor Commissioner Terry Johnson's office said neither Mars nor Ethel M Chocolates have any labor complaints pending against them.
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