$3 Million for Super Bowl Ad. $3 for Workers Who Paid For It

[dcsmart]

Liberian rubber workers walk for miles with heavy metal buckets of rubber on their backs.




Nearly 100 million football fans across the country will be tuning in to watch Bruce Springsteen belt out his trademark songs celebrating America’s workers during halftime at the Super Bowl this evening. They also will see two new 30-second commercials—estimated to cost at least $3 million each—from Bridgestone Firestone, the world’s largest tire company and the halftime sponsor.

But none of the viewers will see Austin Natee and his fellow workers. Natee is president of the union that represents the thousands of Liberian rubber workers who earn $3 on a good day, but whose hard labor creates the profits that Bridgestone Firestone uses to pay for the halftime spectacular.

When he was in Washington, D.C., last year to accept the 2007 Meany-Kirkland Human Rights Award on behalf of the rubber workers, Natee explained how Bridgestone Firestone continually exploits workers and pollutes the environment. Saying the workers live in modern-day slavery, he explained that rubber tappers work 14 hours a day and must tap 750 rubber trees and accumulate 150 pounds of latex daily—all for little more than $3 a day and a monthly 100-pound bag of subsidized rice if quotas are met.

FULL ARTICLE
http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/02/01/3-million-for-super-bowl-ad-3-for-workers-who-paid-for-it/#more-9837

[hendo]

1. 100 lbs of rice?

damn, thats a helluva lot of rice. 250 cups give or take. Rice retails in the US for $1.37 a pound, so $137 for a 100 pound bag.

Lets be generous and say they only work 6 day work weeks, and lets also say, being generous, they get a week off a year. so 51x6= 306. The GDP per capita of Liberia is: 379.478. If you figure in the $137 a month for a 100 pound bag of month, they earn $2023.478 in USD. Considering the average person in Liberia makes $379.48 a year (and they probably work more than that), these rubber tappers are at the high end of the wage scale.

and yes, I know that rice isn't as expensive there, but if we are going to compare them to US workers, why stop with wages earned.