Alleged forced labor scandal rocks EV industry: ‘This is the price of environmentalism’
The Washington Post’s exposé alleges ‘slavery-like’ conditions of worker exploitation, deception, and withheld wages in the electric vehicle industry.
A disturbing exposé from the Washington Post is raising serious ethical questions about the global electric vehicle boom, detailing alleged “slavery-like” conditions tied to a Brazilian plant operated by Chinese automaker BYD.
The exposé details a specialized task force’s findings of the alleged scheme, which “began in China, where job postings and foremen issued false promises of good pay — usually more than $1,700 per month — often without committing them to writing.”
“At the Brazilian border, workers were brought in on visas sponsored by [Chinese electric automaker] BYD that identified them incorrectly as specialized technicians rather than manual laborers,” the exposé alleges.
“They didn’t speak Portuguese. Many of their passports, investigators found, had been locked inside a drawer at the jobsite. Most of their pay — around half of what was promised, prosecutors said — was deposited in China, not Brazil. Some of the housing structures were patrolled by an armed guard, according to investigators,” it continues.
“What China was doing was saying, ‘Hey, yeah, we’re going to pay you all this money. We’re just going to deposit it in an account that you can’t access because you’re halfway around the world. How does that do for you?’” BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere comments.
The article also points out that the workers “never seemed to do anything for fun,” and their food was prepared in a garage “amid industrial detritus and vermin.”
But it gets even worse, with the Washington Post writing that “authorities alleged BYD and its partners had preyed upon 220 vulnerable laborers — some of whom were illiterate — duping them with false promises of high pay.”
“They were then pressed into punishing labor from which they could not escape. Many had their passports confiscated, prosecutors alleged, and much of their promised pay was withheld,” the article continues.
“This is the price of your environmentalism, boys and girls. This is what’s happening all over the place. ... BYD is making these vehicles incredibly cheaply. This is not the way that Tesla is doing business by any means. But there are companies that do it this way,” Stu comments.
“We’re used to this type of thing from places like China. They can get these prices way, way down, and they’re building it on the backs of people like this,” he says of the allegations.
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