Free trade with Africa leads chocolate companies corrupt

When Milton S. Hershey began making chocolate along with his famous caramel, he once said that the best kind of advertising was defined as providing quality to buyers. What exactly did he mean by that simple statement?

Hershey strived to produce the greatest chocolate he could to please his consumers. He would not believe that in the years to come he would eventually create a company that would take part in a huge scandal in order to become one of the richest companies in the world. Over time, the word “quality” has lost its value when Hershey built his first chocolate factory.

Recently three California residents filed a lawsuit against the three wealthiest chocolate companies including Hershey, Mars and Nestle. The California residents complained that each company allegedly failed to disclose the practices of work exploitation among workers.

According to Business Wire, the national class-action law firm in California stated that the three corporations regularly import cocoa beans from suppliers who use unfair labor practices, mostly among children. They state that these companies are importing from plantations along the Ivory Coast in Africa; a place that forces child labor and trafficking.

Recognized by the United Nations in the year of 2014, more than 1.1 million children in the Ivory Coast were engaged in the worst forms of child labor, according to The Daily Beast. This gave the three buyers reason to believe that these corporations knowingly work with an organization that heavily relies on child laborers while continuing to profit from the supplies imported from Africa that is then sold to American consumers.

It is quite ironic that a company that sells chocolate to families deliberately makes investments from the sweat, blood and tears of young children who are forced to work in horrendous conditions without pay. Hershey’s, Mars and Nestle are willing to take the risks just to be able to keep up the competition and climb to the top of the financial ladder.

The child laborers are starving and most of them are brutally beaten. No child or even adult should be exposed to these types of conditions. It seems as though our world has advanced in ways that do not lead to a change in the flaws that affect us the most. Those advancements, such as technology do not compare to living and breathing human beings.

In all the generations that have passed, there have been numerous honorable activists who have ventured to make the unlawfulness disappear. Our conditions have only gotten worse. We are not honoring the men and women such as Florence Kelley and Samuel Gompers who fought to end labor exploitation and unfair child labor.

Florence Kelley’s movement towards ending child labor led to laws that have allowed children, regardless of their financial status, to have the opportunity to attend school. The laws she suggested — still in effect today — have provided the ability for the children to be safe from the dangers of being injured in filthy sweatshops.

Samuel Gomper’s contribution to the fight towards resolving unfair practices among child workers have effortlessly created a degree of enforcement regarding child labor standards. He was the longest serving president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), an organization in which focused on securing members of the workforce safer working conditions, higher wages and a shorter work week. They also created laws to increase the working age, so younger children would not be disclosed to the dangers of the factory machinery.

Hershey and Mars have claimed that they will become slave-free by the year 2020, but why does it take an amount of four years for them to just stop using the goods from the Ivory Coast? It seem as if the million dollar companies are afraid that they will not be able to succeed if they are unable to use the goods that are derived from corruption.