| Annie Lee follows up today on a story from the magazine's July issue about the dirty and deadly business of nickel mining in Indonesia, as the US comes to terms with the risks. Plus: Kamala Harris's meme campaign and why burgers are getting more expensive. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up. The US sounded an alarm this month over the use of forced labor in Indonesia in the production of nickel, a metal that's critical to many electric-vehicle batteries. It's the first time the Department of Labor has added Indonesian nickel to its exploitation list, citing multiple NGO reports about workers being deceptively recruited, facing violent punishments and having their movement restricted. (The State Department had raised human trafficking concerns back in 2022.) Indonesia, home to the world's largest reserves of the raw material, has attracted billions of dollars in Chinese investment in mine development and the construction of processing plants. The listing adds to the mounting concerns over the true price of the auto industry's green revolution. "Many workers receive a lower wage than promised along with longer work hours," the Labor Department report said. "Workers regularly have passports confiscated by employers and experience arbitrary deduction of wages, as well as physical and verbal violence as means of punishment." Many workers are in industrial parks that are majority-owned by Chinese companies, according to the department, and there are indicators of forced labor, including "restriction of movement, isolation, constant surveillance, and forced overtime," it added. "All of which are reportedly common practices in the production of nickel" in Indonesia. My colleague Matthew Campbell and I spent more than a year investigating the dark side of Indonesian nickel and tracking its route into electric cars. Our reporting found that the jobs in the country are also dangerous, with few safeguards for workers. At a sprawling complex of factories and smelters on the island of Sulawesi, there's an extensive record of fatal accidents and ecological damage. Workers have been buried under slag, crushed by heavy equipment and killed in falls. Respiratory illnesses are a common complaint in the surrounding community. We documented the troubling ESG risks in our Businessweek feature.  The nickel smelting process at a foundry in Indonesia. Photographer: Bannu Mazandra/AFP Indonesia, helped by the investments from Chinese companies, has transformed the global nickel supply in the past decade. The metal used in stainless steel and batteries has created fortunes in the Southeast Asian country—and tens of thousands of jobs—just as governments around the world are promoting EVs on environmental grounds. Although the risks around Indonesian nickel aren't lost on the supply chain, what's less clear is how and whether the industry will take action on it. With its cheap workers and power, Indonesia offers a drastic cost advantage compared with other sources of nickel, such as Australia and Canada. That's especially important, now that the pace of demand for EVs has slowed, putting pressure on manufacturers to cut costs to stay profitable. Tesla Inc. pointed out in its most recent impact report that the EV transition "will not be possible by only relying on non-Indonesian nickel." Quite so: Indonesia, accounting for roughly half of global production, has been squeezing out pricier competitors. The Southeast Asian country has been seeking a critical minerals deal with Washington to ensure its nickel plays a role for American EV companies. The addition to the forced labor list could make that more challenging, but the world doesn't seem to have a lot of alternatives. | 
No comments:
Post a Comment