Sweat Shop Mickey !!!

[rogerluli]

Laopo is driving a Ford now and she asked me about the company the other day. I told her the story of Henry Ford and how many Americans credit him with starting the growth of the middle class in America by offering his workers MUCH higher wages than other maufacturers at the time, thereby allowing them to afford to buy Fords... the classic win-win.

 

The list of companies that have drawn bad PR by benefiting from sweatshops in China and other emerging countries is very long. The problem for China is that if wages there rise too much these low-cost manufacturers will just move down the line to the next country where they can exploit the workers...

 

http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/2042/evilmickeyhp6.jpg

 

 

 

HONG KONG -- Hundreds of people making stuffed toys for The Walt Disney Co. at a factory in southern China are working up to 16 hours a day with only a few days off a month, a Hong Kong-based labor activist group said Wednesday.

"During the peak season, before Christmas, workers at the factory start at 8 a.m. and don't finish until midnight," said Jenny Chan, an activist with the Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior.

 

Chan said the Tianyu Toys factory in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan regularly holds back workers' wages for up to 45 days, and paid overtime of 3 yuan (US$0.40) an hour, less than half the rate set by Chinese labor laws.

 

She said this prompted a mass strike in September, but that management had only increased overtime pay to 3.5 yuan an hour.

 

Alannah Goss, spokeswoman for Walt Disney Co. (Asia Pacific) Ltd., confirmed that Tianyu Toys supplied goods to some of its licensees, but declined to give specific details or comment on the allegations.

 

"The Walt Disney Company and its affiliates deal with claims of unfair labor practices very seriously, and investigates all allegations thoroughly," she said in an e-mail response to The Associated Press.

 

Tianyu's general manager rejected the allegations of labor violations, but would not reveal details about staff wages.

 

"I don't want to comment in detail. Our factory strictly adheres to local labor regulations. I'm the general manager here and I haven't heard any of our workers complaining about the factory," Man Wong said.

 

The activist group has previously accused factories in southern China that are churning out goods for Disney and other global brands of overworking laborers and skimping on pay and benefits.

 

About a dozen activists demonstrated outside Hong Kong Disneyland on Tuesday night to protest alleged labor abuses at the Tianyu factory.

 

The group also released a report on working conditions at the factory, quoting unnamed workers who said they received a monthly salary of 500-600 yuan (US$66-$80), out of which they had to pay for food and accommodation.

[jemmyell]

"You load sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St Peter don't you call me cause I can't go! I owe my soul to the company store"

 

-James

[rogerluli]

"China has very good labor laws...the problem is that nobody implements them."

 

 

 

'Sweatshop snoops' take on China factories

 

SHEK YAN, China: As workers poured out of factories into the evening sunlight, Samuel Wong trolled the streets of an industrial zone here in a minivan, looking for the garment factory he had come to spy on.

 

In the jargon of the manufacturing business, Wong is known as a social compliance auditor. But sweatshop snoop might be a better description.

 

Wong works for American and European companies that buy shoes, clothing and toys from Asian factories and that want an unvarnished view of what happens behind the heavily guarded factory gates - a job that the Chinese government, preoccupied with maintaining economic growth, has neither the will nor the resources to pursue.

 

"No one is willing to tell you the truth of what they are doing," Wong said from the back of the minivan.

 

Factories in China are using increasingly sophisticated methods to cover up widespread workplace violations, Wong and other inspectors in the industry say.

 

Some factories use specially designed software to churn out fictitious employee work logs. Factory managers share tips in Internet chat rooms and hire consultants who coach them on how auditors operate. Less innovative are the cheat sheets that factory supervisors hand out to their employees withquestions that auditors are likely to ask - and the preferred answers. (Do you work on Sundays? Answer: Never!)

 

Wong's mission on a recent evening was on behalf of a U.S. retailer, which suspected that its shirt supplier here on the outskirts of Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, was lying about the hours its employees worked. Before the formal audit, Wong and his team monitored the factory from a distance, casually chatting with workers in the area - a strategy that paid off when he proved to factory managers a week later that they had falsified their employee records.

 

Daniel Viederman, executive director of Verit¨¦, a nonprofit social compliance company that has been hired by the likes of Apple Computer to investigate allegations of poor working conditions at the factory in China where some iPods are made, said that Chinese factories used "institutional approaches to deception."

 

"We have explicitly proven that the management at factories was lying to us," Viederman said. "The manager then usually comes clean and says, 'Yeah, you're right.'"

 

Social compliance audits began as part of the anti-sweatshop movement of the 1990s, when groups in the United States put pressure on companies likeNike and Wal-Mart to improve working conditions at subcontracting factories.

 

Awareness in the West of dangerous working conditions and low pay was raised by a 1993 fire in a Thai toy factory that killed 188 workers, a class-action lawsuit brought by workers in the U.S. territory of Saipan against major brand names and a scandal over working conditions at Latin American shops making a clothing line for the U.S. television personality Kathie Lee Gifford. The eventsalso convinced many companies that they could not afford the bad publicity.

 

And so began a paradoxical chapter in manufacturing history, where companies in the capitalist West vowed to improve working conditions in China, the erstwhile communist workers' paradise.

 

On the books, Chinese labor laws are strict. The workweek is 40 hours, after which generous overtime must be paid, ranging from 150 percent to 200 percent of base salary, until a total of 66 hours, the effective legal weekly limit. Workers are entitled to at least one day off a week. No one younger than 16 is allowed to work in a factory.

 

"China has very good labor laws, very worker friendly," said Steve Feniger, a managing director of SSPartners, a trading company, who has spent nearly three decades in China. "The problem is that nobody implements them."

 

The Ministry of Labor and Social Security in China employs 20,000 full-time labor inspectors, according to its annual statistical bulletin. The ministry says it audited 1.2 million business units last year and handled 250,000 cases of employee complaints, including repayment of back wages to 8.4 million workers.

 

But inspectors say the government's presence is barely felt in the factories they visit, partly because there is no political will to crack down.

 

Apo Leung, executive director of the Asia Monitor Resource Center, a nonprofit organization that inspects factories across Asia, says workers' rights are secondary for local government officials in China. They are focused on attracting investors and increasing economic growth.

 

"These are migrant workers, not local people," Leung said. "They are looked upon as second-class citizens."

 

The exception, he said, is when a case of worker abuse gains national attention.

 

Verit¨¦, the social compliance company, says workers were not properly paid for overtime work in 68 percent of the factories it audited last year, a figure virtually unchanged from previous years. Employees worked beyond the legal limit in two-thirds of the factories it audited. The company has performed about 400 audits in China since 2002.

[Tony_onrock]

Only one season working from 8 to 12 and they have the balls to complain? I have been working like that in China almost year round and I never complained! Talk about low wages? My boss refuse to pay us even a fraction of what we have earned till year later and I never complained. No matter where I worked, we never had the right to form a labor union and I never got paid for over time.

 

The most exploited are not those working in garment factories. The most exploited are those who work as lawyers and investment bankers!! Yet we never complain as we are being exploited willingly, why should the garment factory worker be different? We don't like the long hours we can quit and starve, they don't like it, they can do the same.

[rogerluli]

Only one season working from 8 to 12 and they have the balls to complain? I have been working like that in China almost year round and I never complained! Talk about low wages? My boss refuse to pay us even a fraction of what we have earned till year later and I never complained. No matter where I worked, we never had the right to form a labor union and I never got paid for over time.

 

The most exploited are not those working in garment factories. The most exploited are those who work as lawyers and investment bankers!! Yet we never complain as we are being exploited willingly, why should the garment factory worker be different? We don't like the long hours we can quit and starve, they don't like it, they can do the same.

 

So Tony you would estimate your OT pay as less than 3.5 RMB/hour???

[Guest ShaQuaNew]

Exploiting workers? Such a farce. These factories are serving to provide a working wage where there would otherwise be none. That is simply not exploiting. If there were other jobs to go to, for more money, the people would go. Seems there are always activists that think employers and businesses should pay more than what the market says is a suitable wage. Militants have closed more factories and left starving people in their wake. Hardly a suitable tradeoff.

[rogerluli]

I'm not sure what a "working wage" is??? Perhaps you meant a "living wage"...And your definition for that seems to be anything above STARVATION...Is that really an acceptable wage for hard-working people wherever in the world they may live??? Is that an avenue for moving out of poverty???

[Trigg]

"You load sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St Peter don't you call me cause I can't go! I owe my soul to the company store"

 

-James

 

Orrrrrrr,

"You load sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and soppin' with sweat. St Peter don't you call me when it comes my day, cuzz I'll be a goin' the other way"

 

TN Ernie Ford would be proud!

 

 

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

[rogerluli]

 

Quite so!!!

[Guest ShaQuaNew]

I'm not sure what a "working wage" is??? Perhaps you meant a "living wage"...And your definition for that seems to be anything above STARVATION...Is that really an acceptable wage for hard-working people wherever in the world they may live??? Is that an avenue for moving out of poverty???

 

True, using the term working wage is probably a misnomer, but at the same time, it is indeed an income. I agree with you that by US standards many of the Chinese factories miss the mark. What you fail to mention however is the joy that happens in poor Chinese communities when a factory is built there. There, the people who formerly had little to no way of getting an income, now have that opportunity. Also, the young people that go to these factories send most of their money home and subsist on very little.

 

I disagree with you fundamentally that there is something wrong with that. In fact, I do not fault an employer for seeking to find people to work for their companies for the lowest wage possible. Nor do I fault the worker for trying to get more money. It's just the way it works.

 

Lan shares with me that the people of China are extremely grateful to large companies that have businesses there. They are helping to make China a better place for all. Still, change is needed, but not of the type that will close these businesses.

 

You mentioned Ford in one of your posts. Yes, Ford and GM workers are losing their jobs every single day. Once the powerhouse of the world car market, they are now losing ground. Why? Unions might be partly to blame, but in truth, when you have workers in a manufacturing plant, some with less than a high school education, earning in excess of 80K per year, something is going to give. Part of it is the ebb and flow, or the evolution of business. I'm betting that the thousands of people now out of work in Detroit, get my point.

[rogerluli]

Your imagined situation of a factory moving into a poor, rural area is not reality. Most of these factories are in the "suburbs" of the major urban areas of China. The workers are the poor rural people, as the second article points out usually young women, who come to the cities to try to make a living. There they are NOT paid what the government demands but substantially less. There they are NOT given the kind of health and safety requirements that the government claims for ALL workers but substantially less. Is it acceptable in your world for a company to pay people and treat people in this way by stealth or bribery of officials?

 

My comment about Ford was of historical interest only. I have no interest in getting into a discussion of present day American labor issues.

[SirLancelot]

Your imagined situation of a factory moving into a poor, rural area is not reality. Most of these factories are in the "suburbs" of the major urban areas of China. The workers are the poor rural people, as the second article points out usually young women, who come to the cities to try to make a living. There they are NOT paid what the government demands but substantially less. There they are NOT given the kind of health and safety requirements that the government claims for ALL workers but substantially less. Is it acceptable in your world for a company to pay people and treat people in this way by stealth or bribery of officials?

 

My comment about Ford was of historical interest only. I have no interest in getting into a discussion of present day American labor issues.

 

Roger, while I would like to see improvements for the general Chinese population--especially the poor--the rural poor ladies you point out did not have a better life in their respective poor farmlands. They didn't have a better wage or better and safer environments working back home. I agree with you that the new companies should hopefully provide for something better than what the migrant workers had before, but it's highly doubtful that they're having it worse than before.

 

In the end, the migrant workers are not forced to leave their poor rural villages for GuangDong province to work in those factories. They do choose to go because they know they'll have more opportunities of securing employment and getting higher pay than they would staying back in their poor rural village.

 

I agree with SQN that these factories are bringing wages up in China and that is a good thing, but there are negatives as well. Without question, this increase in factory jobs is bringing in pollution. That is a negative. But all countries go through this, even the US during the early 1900.

 

Tony_O, you amaze me with some of your brutal comments. You're actually comparing lawyers and I-bankers who make $8K/month starting salary with those who make $80.00/month? For the eventual payoff of $250K/year salary, I think the lawyers and I-bankers don't put in enough time. They should be doing 100+ hours a week! We did that in IT during the dot.com days!

[Guest ShaQuaNew]

Your imagined situation of a factory moving into a poor, rural area is not reality. Most of these factories are in the "suburbs" of the major urban areas of China. The workers are the poor rural people, as the second article points out usually young women, who come to the cities to try to make a living. There they are NOT paid what the government demands but substantially less. There they are NOT given the kind of health and safety requirements that the government claims for ALL workers but substantially less. Is it acceptable in your world for a company to pay people and treat people in this way by stealth or bribery of officials?

 

My comment about Ford was of historical interest only. I have no interest in getting into a discussion of present day American labor issues.

 

True. The factories are being built in major cities where it's easy to get raw product shipped in and finished product shipped out. However, as Lance mentions, the Chinese people are travelling far and wide from the rural communities for these seemingly simple jobs. Did you see the China Rising series on the Discovery channel a few months back? They profiled several Chinese families that where the young able-bodied sons and daughters moved to the big city for these jobs. The parents were so proud of their children because they had a good job and could then send money home to help their families. Heart warming indeed!

[Thomas Promise]

I'm not sure what a "working wage" is??? Perhaps you meant a "living wage"...And your definition for that seems to be anything above STARVATION...Is that really an acceptable wage for hard-working people wherever in the world they may live??? Is that an avenue for moving out of poverty???

 

True, using the term working wage is probably a misnomer, but at the same time, it is indeed an income. I agree with you that by US standards many of the Chinese factories miss the mark. What you fail to mention however is the joy that happens in poor Chinese communities when a factory is built there. There, the people who formerly had little to no way of getting an income, now have that opportunity. Also, the young people that go to these factories send most of their money home and subsist on very little.

 

I disagree with you fundamentally that there is something wrong with that. In fact, I do not fault an employer for seeking to find people to work for their companies for the lowest wage possible. Nor do I fault the worker for trying to get more money. It's just the way it works.

 

Lan shares with me that the people of China are extremely grateful to large companies that have businesses there. They are helping to make China a better place for all. Still, change is needed, but not of the type that will close these businesses.

 

You mentioned Ford in one of your posts. Yes, Ford and GM workers are losing their jobs every single day. Once the powerhouse of the world car market, they are now losing ground. Why? Unions might be partly to blame, but in truth, when you have workers in a manufacturing plant, some with less than a high school education, earning in excess of 80K per year, something is going to give. Part of it is the ebb and flow, or the evolution of business. I'm betting that the thousands of people now out of work in Detroit, get my point.

What is hurting the former Big 3 is the health care benefits for retired workers. It puts $1500 to the price of every car and truck. As far as the factory workers who have less then a high school education earning 80K a year they seem pretty smart to me. Another interesting statistic is: CEO pay packages skyrocketed, rising from 42 times the average worker's salary in 1980 to 531 times the average worker's salary in 2000. Weaker unions? More corporate greed to a select few.

Take look this week at Merrill Lynch.

Edited November 1, 2007 by Thomas Promise (see edit history)

[GZBILL]

Exploiting workers? Such a farce. These factories are serving to provide a working wage where there would otherwise be none. That is simply not exploiting. If there were other jobs to go to, for more money, the people would go. Seems there are always activists that think employers and businesses should pay more than what the market says is a suitable wage. Militants have closed more factories and left starving people in their wake. Hardly a suitable tradeoff.

 

The majority of these workers haven't even a primary school education. In a province where the average wage is about 1,800 RMB per month, 800 is pretty darned good for someone with zero skills and even less education.