Chalk up another casualty of the Firestone fiasco. In February,
the company added 98,000 tires to the 6.5 million it recalled
last August after 174 people died in accidents related to its
faulty tires. But the recalls are also hurting workers at the
tiremaker's rubber plantation in the war-ravaged nation of
Liberia, forcing African employees who earn only a few dollars a
day out of their homes. A billboard at the entrance of
Firestone's 35,000-acre facility in Harbel, Liberia, declares it
the "World's Largest Rubber Plantation." The 5,600 workers at
the plantation are supposed to receive free housing. Many of the
company houses, however, were destroyed during Liberia's seven-
year-long civil war, which ended in 1997 at a cost of 150,000
lives. Firestone, which has been exporting latex from Liberia
for 75 years, had slowly been repairing the homes. But in the
wake of the American tire recalls, Liberian union officials
charge that the company has stopped nearly all renovation on the
plantation. "Many houses are