Furniture giant IKEA has agreed to pay 6 million euros ($6.5 million) towards a government fund compensating victims of forced labor under Germany’s communist dictatorship, in a move campaigners hope will pressure other companies to follow. Political as well as criminal prisoners in Germany during the Cold War era were forced to build flatpack furniture for IKEA. The revelations came to light in Swedish and German media reports more than a decade ago, prompting the company to commission an independent investigation. Prisoners were producing furniture for IKEA, a global giant in the home furnishings industry, as recently as the 1970s and 1980s, the investigation conducted by auditors Ernst & Young found. IKEA representatives at the time were likely aware that political prisoners were being used to supplement labor, the report found. The former East Germany was occupied by the Soviet Union from 1949 until 1990, which installed a rigid communist…
