Ikea, the Swedish furniture company, has said it “deeply regrets” that political prisoners in the former German Democratic Republic were used to manufacture its products.
The company admitted the use of prison labour after it released a damning independent report into its links with both the East German communist state and Cuba.
The report, by auditors Ernst and Young, concluded that German prisoners had supplied parts to the Swedish company for nearly 30 years. “We deeply regret that this could happen,” said Jeanette Skjelmose, Ikea’s sustainability manager. “At the time, we did not yet have the well-organised control system we have today and clearly did not do enough to prevent this type of production method.”
The company had claimed previously that it had no knowledge of the use of forced labour at any plant used to supply its products.
Ikea developed strong links with the East German communist state in the 1970s, striking deals with manufacturers to supply products and furniture components. One of the producers, according to Stasi records discovered by the German television company WDR last year, used political prisoners to build sofas. The factory in the town of Waldheim stood next to a prison and it was claimed that inmates were used as unpaid labour.
Hans Klare, a former inmate at Waldheim who worked on sofa production at the factory, described conditions there as “slave labour”, with workers having to sleep above the factory floor and working long hours with little rest and in dangerous conditions.
The Ernst and Young report also concluded that the company may have known about the use of prisoners. “The investigation showed there were Ikea managers who were aware of the possibility that political prisoners would be used to manufacture Ikea products in the former East Germany,” said the report.
Researchers for the auditors studied 20,000 documents from Ikea’s internal records and 80,000 in German archives, many of them originally compiled by East Germany’s feared Stasi secret police. About 90 people, including former prisoners, were interviewed. Rainer Wagner, the chairman of a group representing victims of the East German state and who suffered forced labour, said he hoped Ikea would consider compensating forced labourers, some of whom still carried the psychological and physical scars of their imprisonment.
“Ikea has taken the lead on this, for which we are very grateful,” he added at a press conference in Berlin where the report was presented. He stressed that there were many more companies who profited from East German prison labour that had yet to confront their past.
Despite the cautious welcome from Mr Wagner, Roland Schulz, the vice-president of an association representing victims of the communist regime in East Germany, dismissed the Ernst and Young report as “unscientific”. “Ikea as the guilty party is itself conducting the investigation rather than leaving it to unbiased sources. Therefore we strongly doubt the validity of the results,” he said.
The report found that a deal with a Cuban manufacturer, which also may have resulted in the use of forced labour, floundered after just one shipment, if only because the quality of the products was not up to Ikea’s exacting standards.
Ikea has invested considerable time and effort in building a reputation as an ethical company that adheres to strict codes of practice in producing furniture.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/sweden/9683613/Ikea-regrets-forced-labour-use-in-East-Germany.html
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