Ikea apologizes for its 1980s 'prison labor' line of furniture

If you’re sitting on an Ikea couch or chair right now, the Swedish company’s admission today that it had used East German prison labor during the 1980s might make that seat a bit uncomfortable. The company’s manager in Germany apologized for failing to act when rumors of the forced labor were made known to company officials. The acknowledgement follows an intensive yearlong investigation, which the company handed off to auditors Ernst & Young in May in order to ensure it was objective, in which tens of thousands of documents from both Ikea and the Stasi (the feared East German secret police) were studied, and interviews were conducted with hundreds of Ikea staff and former prisoners. [Source]

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