Gap, Mattel, Speedo, Wal-Mart Products Linked to Child and Sweatshop Labor in China and India

[T.Ruth2power]

Gap, Mattel, Speedo, Wal-Mart Products Linked to Child and Sweatshop Labor in China and India

The clothing company the Gap has announced it's cut ties with a subcontractor found to be holding children in slave-like conditions in India to make clothing sold by Gap Kids. The London Observer revealed Sunday that children as young as ten years old have been subjected to work long hours without pay and regular threats and beatings. Gap began auditing its labor conditions in 2004, years after reports of abusive conditions at its factories first emerged.
The Gap expose is only the latest scandal linking children's products to sweatshop labor. Earlier this year the toy giant Mattel recalled some 21 million China-made toys found to contain lead paint easily swallowed by children. Last week the National Labor Committee in Support of Human and Worker Rights released three reports documenting the conditions for workers making those toys. The reports found forced labor of up to 90 hours a week and pay as low as 46 cents an hour. Aside from Mattel, other companies using the factories include Wal-Mart, McDonald's and the swimwear manufacturer Speedo.

Charles Kernaghan is the executive director of the National Labor Committee, widely considered this country's leading voice in exposing the foreign labor abuses of major U.S. corporations. He joins me in the firehouse studio.

Charles Kernaghan, Executive Director of the National Labor Committee.

<snip>

The Gap expose is only the latest scandal linking children's products to sweatshop labor. Earlier this year the toy giant Mattel recalled some 21 million Chinese-made toys found to contain lead paint easily swallowed by kids. Last week, the National Labor Committee in Support of Human Rights and Worker Rights released three reports documenting conditions for workers making those toys. The reports found forced labor of up to ninety hours a week and pay as low as forty-six cents an hour. Aside from Mattel, other companies using the factories include Wal-Mart, McDonald’s and the swimwear manufacturer Speedo.

Charles Kernaghan is the executive director of the National Labor Committee, widely considered the country's leading voice in exposing the foreign labor abuses of major US companies. He joins us in the firehouse studio. Welcome to Democracy Now!

CHARLES KERNAGHAN: Good to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: What are you holding?

CHARLES KERNAGHAN: This is a Barbie Pet Doctor set, made in China.

AMY GOODMAN: Barbie Pet Doctor set.

CHARLES KERNAGHAN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s got a stuffed animal.

CHARLES KERNAGHAN: Yeah, little implements. And it was made in a factory called Xin Yi by young women forced to work fourteen-and-a-half hours a day, six days a week, at a minimum. Sometimes they work until midnight, sixteen-and-a-half-hour shifts. They’re at the factory eighty-seven hours a week, paid fifty-three cents an hour as their wage and then cheated of their overtime wage.



<snip>

AMY GOODMAN: You just testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation yesterday. What did you say?

CHARLES KERNAGHAN: Well, basically, I just confronted Mattel, confronted Speedo, confronted Thomas & Friends, because there are about 3,000,000 toy workers in China in 8,000 factories who are being abused and exploited. It turns out Santa’s helpers are really the young women in China who are being forced to work fourteen-and-a-half to sixteen-and-a-half hours a day, cheated of their wages, fired if they’re inattentive at work. In other words, these are poor women being cheated of their wages and who are living under primitive conditions that we couldn’t believe.

For example, in the Speedo -- in the factory that was producing Speedo, in this Guangdong Vanguard factory -- Speedo is the best known swim brand in the world, bestselling swim brand in the world, and an Olympic sponsor. But the workers were working seven days a week. They’re at the factory a hundred hours -- over a hundred hours a week, and one worker actually broke down crying as he discussed working twenty-three hours on a Speedo project, had to work right through the night, twenty-three hours. And his job was at punch compression machine, where they molded the swim masks, and he had to do nine pieces -- he had to do one piece every nine to twelve seconds. And he describes being so exhausted, and you're putting your hands into this dangerous machine to place the goggles, and how terrified you are the machine is going to tear your hands off if you stop for one second, because the machine doesn’t stop. And he had to work twenty-three hours. There’s no Olympic athlete in the world, no matter how great they are, that could do what the sweatshop workers in China are doing, not one. But the Olympic athletes also won’t speak up for these workers who are making their products.

<snip>

Listen to the interview from today's Democracy Now! program here:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/30/1341203

[EFerrari]

1. Thanks for posting this, and welcome to DU.

:thumbsup:

[T.Ruth2power]

3. Thanx for the welcome

Heard Amy's program this AM and of course was not surprised. There's a bill that addresses this going through the House at present that's picking up steam. Read about it in the article and call your rep.

Guess Don Henley didn't dig too deep before signing off with Wal-Mart.

[EFerrari]

4. I heard that report, too. American companies holding back

labor reform in the third world. What a surprise.

Maybe we need some people to flyer WalMart and ToysRUs and etc this December.

Barbie is protected but not the 14 year old girls that are enslaved in the toy factories. :puke:

[louis-t]

2. Wally World has been buying from sweatshops for many years.

The first investgation was way back in the '80's, when we still had real journalists. I'll see if I can find a link.

[louis-t]

12. Here's the link.

It was 'Hard Copy' that did the investigation. I'm looking for the details about the hidden cameras, the factory owner that said he would put whatever label they wanted, the 'Made in USA' signs on shelves full of clothing made in Honduras.

[Joe Fields]

5. I strongly urge everyone to boycot GAP, Old Navy and Banana Republic.

Those three chains are owned by the Fisher family. And not only does this family do tons of business with sweat shops, they also are an evil force in the lumber industry, responsible for clearcutting whole groves of California Redwoods. All this family sees are dollar signs, and feel absolutely no responsibility to our natural heritage, the environment or to human beings.

[Sequoia]

8. What about Eddie Bauer?

I don't shop at Gap or Old Navy...ugliest clothes there. I used to shop at B. Republic when they first came out but weren't they owned by someone else then? Seems I recall it being sold.

[Joe Fields]

9. The Fisher family still owns all three chains. They don't own Eddie Bauer

[elehhhhna]

6. COME ON!!111 Those kids who are getting their asses beat at work

are simply doing the jobs Americans won't do.


"It's uniquely American!" GWB








sarc/off

[JitterbugPerfume]

7. I taped Amy Goodmans interview

and watched it twice

It is horrendous what corporations do for profit .I am becoming VERY careful where I shop(I am about down to the grocery store and Goodwill!)


Welcome to DU !

[crickets]

10. K&R

[Pithlet]

11. The Gap was nothing new. I stopped shopping there years ago because of it.

I'm glad to hear they've finally done something after years of knowing what was going on.

[Shallah Kali]

13. Thank you for posting this. People need to know where their $ are going

when they shop. Unfortunately child slave labor isn't enough for some folks I know to stop buying goods from China. It has taken the toxic chemicals found in the goods to get them to stop.

[upi402]

14. wage slavery

i've fought this shit for decades and it just gets worse because 'mericans are ... i dunno