With Valentine’s Day upon us, we know that chocolate sales will increase. Hearts of chocolate wrapped in red will find their way into peoples’ homes, along with truffles and fancy bars. But as we celebrate yet another chocolate-focused holiday, it’s important to remember how chocolate is produced and who is making and selling it.
Covid-19 has disrupted so many aspects of our lives and so many parts of supply chains. The disruption has varied, depending on the industry, sector, and level in the supply chain. Yet there are a few things that are consistent across global supply chains: workers often earn the least, have bad working conditions, and put their lives at risk -- especially during the pandemic.
This blog discusses the impacts of Covid-19 on the cocoa and chocolate supply chains – from farmers in West Africa who harvest the cocoa, to warehouse workers in Chicago, to the retail workers who ring up and sell consumers chocolate bars in grocery stores. While the Covid-19 pandemic has caused additional strain in food supply chains, it has merely exacerbated inequities and injustices that already existed in the industry. It has continued to leave workers vulnerable, without protection and safe working conditions.
Cocoa Production in Cote d’Ivoire
Cote d’Ivoire produces about 45% of the world’s cocoa, one of the main products in chocolate. In West Africa, cocoa is generally grown on small family farms that are on average 3.4 hectares. The USD $130 billion chocolate industry relies on cocoa farming for its supply of chocolate’s key ingredient. However, this is not a lucrative business: only 9.4% of cocoa farmers in West Africa earn a living income. Because companies pay such low prices for cocoa, many farmers are unable to support their families and often rely on child labor or forced labor.
The pandemic has had a large impact on the Ivorian economy and cocoa production and may have led to an increase in child labor. As Covid-19 spread around the world, Cote d’Ivoire shut its borders and stopped most domestic travel. Workers, many of whom travel from Mali and Burkina Faso to Cote d’Ivoire to work on cocoa farms, were unable to legally enter the country. As a result, some farmers were unable to find enough workers to help harvest the cocoa over the summer, leading to lower yields and therefore lower incomes. This was exacerbated by the difficulties of selling the harvested cocoa during the pandemic, with closed roads and limited travel. Additionally, in the spring of 2020, Ivorian schools shut down. With schools closed, parents increasingly brought their children with them to the cocoa fields – where the children were likely to work on the farm harvesting cocoa.
Mars, Nestlé, Hershey, and other large chocolate companies have seen their chocolate sales increase during the pandemic. Yet, poverty wages and child labor continue to exist in the cocoa supply chain -- and labor exploitation continues in almost every other level of the chocolate supply chain.
From Cocoa to Chocolate
Once cocoa is exported from West Africa, it’s roasted, ground, and tempered. This process changes it from cocoa to chocolate. With this transformation, a processed commodity that had previously earned a low price in its natural form is suddenly much more valuable. This chocolate is then turned into chocolate bars, candy, and other final products. Chocolate manufacturing companies earn 35.2% of the value of a chocolate bar. Yet the workers packaging, shipping, and selling the chocolate are susceptible to many of the same patterns of exploitation as cocoa farmers: low wages, insecurity, and dangerous working conditions.
Chicago is home to the headquarters of many large food companies: McDonalds, KraftHeinz, Archer-Daniels Midland, Quaker Oats, Mars Wrigley Confectionery, and many more. This post focuses on Mars because Mars Wrigley is both the world’s largest and the most profitable candy maker. Maker of M&Ms, Snickers, and Twix, Mars buys about 400,000 metric tons of cocoa per year, much of it from Cote d’Ivoire.
Mars Wrigley has a number of local factories in the Chicago-land areas, as well as a large distribution center in Joliet, a suburb of Chicago. This warehouse has been the focus of worker organizing during the pandemic. Mars has outsourced much of the warehouse work to DHL, which manages the distribution center, and to XPO Logistics. Since summer 2020, workers in the distribution center have complained that the warehouse had inadequate sanitation and Covid-19 screenings, it lacked “basic safety measures such as socially-distanced workstations,” and “workers were systematically denied paid sick leave.” This matches patterns across the state; as of December 2020, manufacturing and warehouses had the second-highest number of Covid-19 outbreaks of any industry, after nursing homes.
Over the summer, a group of workers organized to try to get better and safer working conditions. Over 100 workers signed a petition “asking for basic health and safety protections and hazard pay.” The workers gave the petition to Mars, DHL, and XPO Logistics, which also face accusations of discrimination and explotiation. The workers demanded hazard and quarantine pay as well as greater safety measures for the duration of the Covid-19 crisis. Not long thereafter, a number of workers were fired and blacklisted.
Warehouse Workers for Justice, a group fighting for fair working conditions for warehouse workers, has raised awareness of abuses in the industry and demanded reforms for years. Workers in warehouses are especially vulnerable because of the employment structure -- employees are generally hired through temporary staffing agencies with few protections or rights. As a result, there has reportedly been little recourse for workers to address reportedly rampant health and safety problems, discrimination, and sexual harassment.
The Covid-19 pandemic has caused additional strains in supply chains and has exacerbated inequities and injustices that already existed. Covid-19 has shown just how vulnerable workers are, and that they often lack protection and safe working conditions. Workers who contribute to the food supply chain, including those in warehouses, are among the lowest paid and poorly treated workers in the US. Many of the workers are people of color, including immigrants who often face additional discriminatory and abusive practices.
Retailers and Grocery Stores
Once a chocolate bar has been produced, it travels from the manufacturer to the retailer. Retailers -- often grocery stores -- make large profits off of chocolate. In fact, according to one study, retailers earn 44.2% of the price of a chocolate bar, a higher percentage of the value than any other player in the supply chain. During the pandemic, grocery stores have had record profits. According to the Brookings Institute, the thirteen largest retail and grocery companies earned 42% more, or an additional $17.7 billion, in the first three quarters of 2020 than in the previous year.
Yet that increased profit does not trickle down to workers in grocery stores. Instead, in the US, during the pandemic workers have continued to work long hours, often with low pay (the federal minimum wage is still $7.25 per hour). While many grocery stores gave workers hazard pay at the beginning of the pandemic, that generally stopped in the early summer. And even though grocery store workers are front-line workers who risk their health each day, only 13 states have started to focus on vaccinating them.
As the Covid-19 pandemic has continued to spread, the effects within the chocolate industry are felt from the cocoa farmers to the workers in grocery stores. These frontline workers (who are often low-paid) have continued to work despite the pandemic. The pandemic has demonstrated just how exploitative our labor system is throughout supply chains. It has highlighted many of the issues that have always been present: low wages, exploitative labor practices, and unsafe working conditions. Let’s hope that this new public awareness will lead to changes in a post-pandemic world.
Allie Brudney is a Staff Attorney at Corporate Accountability Lab. Wardah Bari is a law student at Notre Dame Law School and a legal intern at Corporate Accountability Lab.
