Oh Dear! Tesla, VW, Volvo, Renault and Mercedes-Benz,

have all been caught out telling porky pies,

you may remember I made a post about the disgusting way cobalt is mined by children, it is here, cobalt an essential for electric car batteries is often dug out by hand in unregulated conditions, sometimes by child workers, a UN’s report details how significant an issue this is, claiming roughly 40,000 children work “in extremely dangerous conditions, with inadequate safety equipment, for very little money in the mines in Southern Katanga.” it is as bad for the adults,

above the bare, brick shack where a worker for one of the large industrial mines lives. He earns about £3.60 a day. Photograph: Pete Pattisson, from the article:

Pierre is mining for cobalt, one of the world’s most sought-after minerals, and a key ingredient in the batteries that power most electric vehicles (EVs).

He says his basic wage is the equivalent of £2.60 ($3.50) a day, but if he works through lunch and puts in hours of overtime, he can make up to about £3.70. Not that lunch is worth waiting for: he claims he is given just two small bread rolls and a carton of juice.

“The salary is very, very small. It gives me a headache … The mine makes so much and we make so little,” he says.

If he takes a day off, he says money is deducted from his wages. If he is sick and misses more than two days in a month, more money is cut. “You can’t even argue. If you do, you’ll be fired,” he says, squatting on the dirt floor of the bare brick shack he rents.

“The relationship between us and the [mine] is like a slave and a master,” says Pierre.

if you only do one thing today please read this article, slavery at the hands of car manufactures is still here in 2021, and there is no reason to suppose it will change anytime soon,

also from the article:

An investigation by the Guardian has found that some workers, often employed through subcontractors, allege they are victims of severe exploitation, including wages as low as 30p an hour, precarious employment with no contracts, and paltry food rations. In a number of mines run by Chinese companies, workers made allegations of discrimination and racism reminiscent of the colonial era.

The Guardian has tracked the cobalt supply chain from TFM and other industrial mines through a number of refiners and battery makers to some of the world’s leading electric car manufacturers, including Tesla, VW, Volvo, Renault and Mercedes-Benz .

While the cobalt supply chain is highly complex, all these car manufacturers identified by the Guardian can be linked to one or more of the industrial mines named by the Guardian through a small number of key refineries and battery makers.

you never read these facts when you go to buy an electric car, strange that, how money talks, but as I keep saying, go green, go clean, go hydrogen!