Blood Battery Action Network
Protecting People and the Planet
CALIFORNIA FUNDS CHILD LABOR
Our Tax Dollars Fund Child Labor
California is using tax dollars to subsidize child labor. When California pays incentives to people purchasing electric cars, California is using tax dollars to subsidize products made through the use of child labor. The batteries in electric cars contain cobalt that was mined by exploited children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
You can help stop California from subsidizing child labor by demanding that lawmakers refuse to spend tax dollars on products that use child labor in their supply chains.
March 5, 2018
"According to a new investigative report by CBS News more than half of the world’s supply of cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and much of that is mined by children."
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Amnesty International Research
Amnesty International has identified several car companies at risk for having cobalt in their supply chains. (Amnesty International 9/30/16) California currently uses tax dollars to help subsidize electric cars from those companies including GM's Chevrolet Volt and Teslas.
In its January 2016 report, Amnesty International revealed that there was a risk that other auto companies, including Daimler, VW and the Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD, were using cobalt that had come from mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where children and adults work in unsafe conditions.
The Los Angeles Times recently reported that the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority awarded over $325 million in grants subsidies and public contracts to the Chinese bus company BYD. (Los Angeles Times 5/20/18) Those public monies were used to purchase electric buses that Amnesty International notes as at risk for containing child labor cobalt.
February 19, 2018
"A 2016 report from Amnesty International cited estimates from UNICEF that about 40,000 boys and girls work in mines across the Congo, many of them cobalt sites."