Exploitation is NOT sustainable! Tell the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil to drop Indofood’s certification!

On a Tuesday morning, a worker at Indofood — Indonesia’s largest food company and business partner to PepsiCo — was called into his manager’s office without warning. Why? Because his manager wanted to pressure and intimidate him into signing a false statement claiming that Indofood had not threatened its workers.

Workers who come forward to report violations of their rights should be protected, not intimidated. 

The move came after the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) — the global certification body for “sustainable” palm oil — sent a team to investigate confidential reports from workers of labor abuse and union busting and to follow up on labor complaints submitted by RAN and our partners, OPPUK and ILRF, based on Rain Action Network's own investigations.

This wasn’t the first time Indofood workers have been interrogated about what they reported to the RSPO — or discouraged from joining a union — and it won’t be the last. With women working without pay or healthcare, and children sometimes working on Indofood’s palm oil plantations, the last thing Indofood wants is people organizing to stand for their basic rights.

Stand with workers and tell the RSPO that this is unacceptable.

Workers deserve protections, not intimidation.

Over the last two years, RAN and our partners have published two investigative reports that have documented intimidation and union busting by Indofood. This latest case proves that Indofood hasn’t changed its practice of exploiting workers. And if its palm oil is still being certified as “sustainable” by the RSPO despite this clear violation, what incentive does Indofood have to change?

Tell the RSPO that companies who intimidate and exploit workers should not be allowed to call their palm oil “sustainable.”

- Fitri Arianti, Indonesia Coordinator of Rainforest Action Network