IKEA Apologizes for Having Used Political Prisoners’ Labor in East Germany

After conducting an internal investigation, the Swedish furniture giant IKEA said Friday it “deeply regrets” that some of its suppliers in the 1980′s used the labor of political prisoners in East Germany.

Apparently, this practice happened right up until the fall of the Berlin wall, in 1989.

The BBC’s Stephen Evans in Berlin said Germans have known for decades that East Germany used political prisoners for manufacturing goods.

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Aaron Schachter: The Swedish furniture giant IKEA today issued an apology that was a long time in coming. IKEA said it “deeply regrets” that some of its suppliers in the 1980s used the labor of political prisoners in East Germany. Apparently this happened right up until the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. The BBC’s Steve Evans is following the story in Berlin. Steve, IKEA had hired the firm Ernst & Young to investigate the matter. What did their report say exactly?

Steve Evans: Well, their report said that these contracts that IKEA had with the East German government were fulfilled at least partly by political prisoners. People kept in Stasi prisons in pretty awful conditions, were doing work for IKEA, either in workshops in the prison or taken to prison workshops. And these prisoners have said it for more than two decades now. One guy I talked to, for example, today said that he’d spent 20 months in a Stasi prison, basically for getting in contact with Amnesty International, and then he got to the west. And a pal of his said, come on, we’ll go shopping, and he went round IKEA and he recognized some of the stuff. So these allegations have been bubbling over and they finally, IKEA, said okay, we’re getting this big outside firm of accountants to investigate, and lo and behold, the accountants said yep. Furthermore, IKEA knew way back in the 80s that political prisoners were being used. IKEA’s defense was, well, we knew, and we got in touch with the East German authorities, and we said please stop, and they didn’t, and we didn’t have the controls in place. To which some of the prisoners say, well, you should have found out a bit more and you should have actually cancelled contracts.

Schachter: Maybe pushed harder.

Evans: Absolutely, that’s what they say.

Schachter: So now the report is out, IKEA is saying mea culpa, we didn’t know, or we tried to change things. And yet the report is still controversial. Why is that?

Evans: Well, some of the people say that there should be compensation. Some of the prisoners at the press conference said look, I just want IKEA to recognize what they did, I want them to say what they did, and I want them to say they are sorry. But there are others who say there is compensation, for example, for victims of the Nazi regime in here, so there should be compensation for victims of the Communist regime.

Schachter: But I understand as well that other companies, mail order companies for one, did the same thing back then. Perhaps it was just the way of doing business with East Germany.

Evans: Yeah, we don’t know the names of other companies that were trading in this kind of way, or using, I nearly said cheap labor, I mean very cheap labor, wageless labor. But the prisoners say it wasn’t just IKEA stuff that they were making. And some of the people in the group say well, let’s draw lessons for today. They think that, for example, Cuba certainly has had a role in this in the past and they say let’s investigate more what the conditions in Chinese manufacturers are, for example. Are Chinese political prisoners being used for this kind of labor. What may have changed, I suppose is that maybe in 80s there wasn’t this focus on labor standards. We bought the stuff, we liked the price, and we didn’t really think very much about it. Maybe that’s changed and maybe companies know that pictures of poor kids or Stasi prisoners on the TV and on the radio doesn’t do them any good.

Schachter: The BBC’s Steve Evans in Berlin. Steve, thank you.

Evans: You’re very welcome.

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