Deal #1999

Feronia's PHC subsidiary employs around 9,000 people in the DRC. Another report states that PHC is one of Congo’s top five private employers, with more than 10,000 workers and approximately 100,000 people living on its plantations. Some of the people from the communities work on the plantations, but the vast majority of jobs are as day labourers where wages are below the costs of living.

Congo’s second-biggest employer, with 3,800 permanent staff and at least 4,000 temporary workers (2016). The workers are paid badly- with payslips ranging from $1.17 (below minimum wage) -$2.22 per day. In 2014, the company entered into negotiations with the four trade unions that represent the workers to update the terms and conditions of the employees for the first time since the mid-1980's. This resulted in an increase in average wages of 70%, increased t c.$4/day. As well as wages, employees receive overtime, maternity pay, holiday pay, end of service pay, bonuses and assistance towards school fees as well as free housing and healthcare for themselves and their families. By 2016 all workers will receive at least a basic salary at minimum wage level. The company often pays its workers late. In conjunction, if workers do not reach their daily targets they do not get paid- some at the Lokutu plantation even hire others as porters, or get their families to help them complete their daily tasks. Workers at the plantations complain of housing in severe disrepair, wages just over a dollar a day for intense field labor and a lack of proper medical care in the rural region. Following the publication of the social infrastructure at the plantations the company is assessing and redesigning the social infrastructure. Community leaders state that communities members are only hired as casual laborers and the last time that a community member was a manager was in 1964 (under Unilever). Civil society organizations from the Lokutu area have documented numerous other labor abuses, such as the lack of contracts between the company and most workers, safety issues with pesticides and the violation of mandatory work hours. A 2019 Human Rights Watch report detailed how Feronia had abused the rights of local communities. These abuses included “abusive employment practices that kept workers in extreme poverty — including unpaid wages, exposing workers to dangerous pesticides.