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Child Labor Class Action Lawsuit Overview:
- Who: Anonymous plaintiffs filed a class action lawsuit against Apple, Google Alphabet, Microsoft, Dell and Tesla.
- Why: The plaintiffs alleged the companies benefit from the use of child labor in the Democratic Republic of Congo to mine cobalt.
- Where: The class action lawsuit was filed in District of Columbia federal court.
U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols has dismissed a class action lawsuit against Apple, Google Alphabet, Microsoft, Dell and Tesla that claimed the companies used cobalt mined by Democratic Republic of Congo (DNC) children in their lithium-ion batteries.
“While plaintiffs’ amended complaint describes tragic events, it suffers from several flaws,” the dismissal states. “Plaintiffs must have standing to bring their claims, but here they do not: the harm they allege is not traceable to any defendant.”
Because the cobalt passes through many entities in the global supply chain, Judge Nichols said there is only a “casual connection” between cobalt mining and the companies.
“It might be true that if Apple, for example, stopped making products that use cobalt, it would have purchased less of the metal from Umicore, which might have purchased less from Glencore, which might have purchased less from CMKK, which might thus have instructed Ismail to stop purchasing cobalt from child artisanal miners, which might have led some of the plaintiffs to not have been mining when their injuries occurred,” the judge said. “But this long chain of contingencies, in all its rippling glory, creates mere speculation, not a traceable harm.”
Class Action Claimed Companies Like Apple and Google Sourced Cobalt That Young Children Mined in Deadly Conditions
The plaintiffs are representative of the young cobalt miners, some of whom are reportedly as young as 6 years old and work in harsh and dangerous conditions that are prohibited by the ILO Convention No. 182, the lawsuit claimed. The children are being made to work full-time dangerous jobs and are being maimed and sometimes killed by tunnels that collapse during the course of their work.
“Defendants Apple, [Google] Alphabet, Dell, Microsoft and Tesla are merely the latest to join the list of rapacious exploiters that have given the DRC a particularly horrific history of being pillaged and plundered and its people brutalized and exploited,” the lawsuit noted.
The plaintiffs say cobalt is an important piece of every lithium-ion battery that is used in the devices that the companies manufacture. Two-thirds of the global cobalt supply is found in the “copper belt” region of the Haut-Katanga and Lualaba Provinces in the DRC.
“Put simply, the hundreds of billions of dollars generated by the defendants each year would not be possible without cobalt mined in the DRC,” the plaintiffs claimed in the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs also claimed that Apple, Google Alphabet, Dell and Microsoft have joined model programs to create a false portrayal that they have attempted to prevent the horrors of cobalt mining by children.
“Defendants are knowingly participating in, supporting and providing the essential market for cobalt that has caused the explosion of production by young children,” the child labor class action lawsuit stated.
Apple has also been the subject of a class action lawsuit filed by consumers who claim that their devices release radiation above legal levels. In both of the class actions, plaintiffs allege that the company puts profits over the well-being of people.
How do you feel about young children mining for cobalt under such deleterious conditions? Leave a message in the comments section below.
The plaintiffs are represented by Terrence P. Collingsworth of International Rights Advocates.
The Child Labor Class Action Lawsuit is Jane Doe 1, et al. v. Apple Inc., et al., Case No. 1:19-cv-03737, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
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