Battery Push By Tesla And Other EV Makers Raises Child Labor Concerns

Carmakers have committed tens of billions of dollars to dramatically boost the production of batteries for electric vehicles in the U.S., including Tesla’s recent plan to triple lithium-ion cell output at its sprawling plant near Reno, Nevada. All of those plants need vast amounts of costly raw materials, including cobalt that’s mainly mined in Congo—and often by children.

A study by New York University and the Geneva Center for Business and Human Rights finds that major auto, battery and electronics manufacturers are doing too little to ensure the cobalt they’re using doesn’t involve child labor at Congo’s numerous unsafe “artisanal” mines. It also calls on these manufacturers and mining and processing companies to help create safeguards that eliminate the practice and improve overall safety.

“About 80% of the world’s cobalt is in the Congo and 20% of that comes from these informal artisanal mines,” Michael Posner, director of NYU’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights and who helped create the report, told Forbes. And although companies including Tesla claim they don’t source cobalt from operations using child labor, “10% of the world’s cobalt is coming out of these artisanal mines—it’s a huge amount of product,” Posner said.

Shifting the auto industry to electric power from petroleum, the primary energy source for a century, is a massive undertaking. It requires the creation of new factories to make millions of batteries and electric motors and a multibillion-dollar program to make the vast and ubiquitous public charging infrastructure all those EVs will need. At the same time, prices for commodity metals including lithium, nickel and cobalt used in lithium-ion batteries will likely remain high as demand races ahead of supply. Eliminating the child-labor issue for cobalt is yet another complication for the EV revolution.

“It is nearly impossible to separate the flow of ASM cobalt from the larger supply of industrially mined cobalt.”

Tesla, in its annual environmental impact report, says it has “zero tolerance” for child labor and has sent a delegation from its “Responsible Sourcing Committee” to the Democratic Republic of Congo in the past to inspect mining conditions there. “The DRC trip provided a more nuanced view of the complex issue of artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) and its history within the DRC,” the company said in its most recent report, without elaborating.

“Global buyers engaging in a futile attempt to avoid cobalt associated with ASM ignore the inconvenient truth that it is nearly impossible to separate the flow of ASM cobalt from the larger supply of industrially mined cobalt,” Dorotheé Baumann-Pauly, director of the Geneva Center and author of the cobalt report, said in an emailed statement.

Last August, CEO Elon Musk and Tesla’s board encouraged shareholders to reject a proposal that would have required the company to provide detailed reporting on its materials sourcing practices and steps to ensure it was relying on child labor, even indirectly. The proposal was defeated overwhelmingly in August 2022. Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment on the NYU/Geneva report.

According to Posner, an Assistant Secretary of State during the Obama Administration, children are used at the artisanal mining sites because it’s simply easier for them to access the small tunnels and holes. “You have people coming onto these mine sites with their families, digging a hole in the ground, which is unstable, then sending their kids down the shaft, and shafts are collapsing.”

Tesla and other companies aren’t directly buying cobalt from small mines, but they’re getting it indirectly, according to the study. While their main source is large industrial operations, such as those run by Glencore, intermediaries are selling ASM cobalt to larger producers, Posner said.

“Cobalt mechanically scooped up by these big mining machines is mixed with cobalt people are digging out of the ground themselves and selling on a local market. And if it’s not mixed together in Congo, a majority of the cobalt is being refined by smelters in China,” he said. “One way or another, if you’re a big auto company, a big electronics firm or battery manufacturer, informal artisanal mined cobalt is part of your supply chain.”

“One way or another, if you’re a big auto company, a big electronics firm or battery manufacturer, informal artisanal mined cobalt is part of your supply chain.”

General Motors, which aims to challenge Tesla’s current EV dominance, said it’s trying to ensure that none of its suppliers use child or forced labor. “We actively monitor our global supply chain and conduct extensive due diligence, particularly where we identify or are made aware of potential violations of the law, our agreements, or our policies—such as our Supplier Code of Conduct, which is guided by the United Nations Global Compact,” spokesman David Barnas said by email.

Ford didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

That said, relying on auto manufacturers to monitor mines for these conditions isn’t a viable long-term solution, according to the report, which concludes the only viable long-term policy is for governments to recognize and regulate small, informal mines and add fencing and other safety features to make them less hazardous. And along with ensuring that the use of children at the mines ends, it wants Congo and users of its cobalt to push for increased use of women workers at the mines to help improve their economic circumstances.

Posner said that a starting point is for companies to acknowledge there’s a problem. “The answer is not to pretend it’s not your problem. And there’s very little being done to formalize and improve the conditions.”