Tuesday 29 October 2024

mรถbelhaus (11. 941)

Voluntarily IKEA is pledging six million euro to a fund to compensate East German prisoners forced to make furniture for the company. As was the case with several western firms during the 1970s and 1980s, the Swedish lifestyle purveyor subcontracted production to the GDR, including forced labour of the incarcerated, many imprisoned by the regime for political reasons, a misdeed that the company has been trying to redress through government channels since it first came to light in 2011, hoping other companies would follow their example. The first store in West Germany opened in Eching, near Munich in 1974 and the first outlet in the former East in 1990 within a month of reunification.