Firestone Tire and Rubber Company

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Bridgestone Firestone, LLC
File:BFlogo.gif
Company type	Subsidiary of Bridgestone
Industry	Manufacturing
Founded	1900 (Akron, Ohio)
Headquarters	Nashville, Tennessee
Key people	Mark A. Emkes, CEO
Products	Tires
Revenue	$2.09 billion USD (2004)
Number of employees	23,000
Website	www.firestone.com

The Firestone Tire and Rubber Company was founded by Harvey Firestone at the turn of the 20th century to supply pneumatic tires for wagons, buggies, and other forms of wheeled transportation common in the era. Firestone soon saw the huge potential for marketing tires for automobiles and befriended Henry Ford, the first industrialist to produce them using the techniques of mass production. Firestone used this relationship to become the original equipment supplier of Ford Motor Company automobiles, and was also active in the replacement market.

History

File:FirestoneTire.jpeg

A Firestone tire

Firestone was originally based in Akron, Ohio, also the hometown of its archrival, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. The company initiated operations in 1900 with 12 employees. Together, Firestone and Goodyear were the largest suppliers of automotive tires in North America for over three-quarters of a century.

In 1984 the Firestone family decided to look for a purchaser and began liquidating assets at that time. The company was purchased off the stock market by the Japanese tire manufacturer Bridgestone in 1988. The combined Bridgestone/Firestone North American operations are now based in Nashville, Tennessee.

For 35 years, the company sponsored the radio and television show The Voice of Firestone.

Liberia Controversy

In 1926, Firestone opened what it claims is the world's biggest rubber plantation in Liberia, West Africa. In 2005, "tappers" (workers who extract latex from rubber trees) on the Liberian plantation filed an Alien Tort Claims Act lawsuit against Bridgestone Firestone. The workers accuse the company of serious labor abuses, including exploitative child labor, which they claim amount to modern-day slavery. Workers specifically claim that Firestone's high daily quotas force them to employ their own children, subjecting them to grueling and dangerous work conditions. In response to the claims, the president of Firestone Natural Rubber told a CNN interviewer that "each tapper will tap about 650 trees a day, where they spend perhaps a couple of minutes at each tree." As the network pointed out, this would add up to more than 21 hours of work per day.

Firestone's request to transfer the case to Indianapolis, Indiana from California was granted in April 2006.

In May 2006, the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) released a report detailing the state of human rights on Liberia's rubber plantations. According to the report, Firestone managers in Liberia admitted that the company does not effectively monitor its own policy prohibiting child labor. UNMIL found that several factors contribute to the occurrence of child labor on Firestone plantations: pressure to meet company quotas, incentive to support the family financially, and lack of access to basic education. The report also noted that workers' housing provided by Firestone has not been rennovated since the houses were constructed in the 1920s and 1930s.