| Wal-Mart Christmas Ornaments Made Under
Illegal Sweatshop Conditions in China
Wal-Mart Christmas ornament workers toil 10 to 15
hours a day, seven days a week, going for months without a day off.
Many workers earn as little as 26 cents an hour—just half of China’s
legal minimum wage. Workers handle toxic chemicals without protective
gear. Some children as young as 12 worked in the factory.
Senator Byron Dorgan holds a simultaneous press conference in the Senate Gallery in Washington, DC.
At a press conference at Rockefeller Center in New York
City, in the shadow of the Christmas Tree, the country’s leading labor
rights activist, National Labor Committee director Charles Kernaghan,
released a 58-page report, documenting the horrific conditions under
which Wal-Mart’s Christmas ornaments are made in China. The release
includes unprecedented photographs and video footage of child laborers
and workers in the Spray Painting department handling potentially
dangerous chemicals without the most rudimentary safety gear.
The National Labor Committee’s report, “A Wal-Mart Christmas Brought to You from a Sweatshop in China”
provides a rare inside view of the giant Guanzhou Huanya ornaments
factory in Guangdong, where every single labor law, not to mention
internationally recognized worker rights standards, are being grossly
violated on a daily basis. The report can be accessed on the NLC’s website: www.nlcnet.org
Among the abusive conditions documented in the report are:
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Five hundred to 600 16-year-old high school students
were employed last summer, along with some children as young as 12
years of age, toiling 10 to 12 to 15 hours a day, seven days a week,
and going for months on end without receiving a single day off.
Wal-Mart Christmas ornament workers are at the factory a minimum of 84
hours a week, while at least half the workers are at the factory 105
hours a week.
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Anyone daring to take a Sunday off will be docked 2 ½ days’ wages.
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Some workers earned as little as 26 cents an hour,
just half China’s legal minimum wage of 55 cents an hour, which itself
is not close to a subsistence level wage. Pay sheets smuggled out of
the factory show workers earning a median wage of 49 cents an hour,
including overtime, and $42.29 for 110 hours of work, while they should
have earned $74.77. Workers were cheated of one-third of the wages
legally due them. Factory pay sheets showed just eight percent of the
workers earning the legal minimum wage, while 92 percent fell below
that.
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Workers in the Spray Paint department who develop
skin rashes and sores while handling potentially dangerous chemicals
have no choice but to leave the factory, as management does not pay
medical bills or sick days. For quitting on short notice, workers are
docked one month’s pay.
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By July, the high school students were so exhausted
from the grueling 12 to 14-hour shifts, seven days a week that they
went on strike and brought a legal suit against the factory, denouncing
the grueling, illegal hours and seven day workweeks for which they were
paid below the legal minimum. The students also reported to the Labor
Bureau that some 12-year-olds worked at the factory.
“With its expensive PR campaign, and masquerading
as Tiny Tim, Wal-Mart is glorifying the virtue of buying cheap goods in
its stores, claiming this is the real holiday spirit,” said Charles Kernaghan,
“But, especially at this time of year, no American would knowingly
purchase a product in Wal-Mart if they knew that bargain was based on
the exploitation of children and teenagers forced to work grueling
hours, seven days a week, who are stripped of their rights and paid
pennies an hour. Wal-Mart will remain a Scrooge, so long as its
bargains are based on the cheapening and immiseration of the lives of
the young workers in China who make 70 percent of the goods sold in
Wal-Mart.”
U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) said in a statement released in Washington, D.C., “Chinese
sweatshops now produce not only the toys under our Christmas trees, but
even the ornaments that hang on those trees. It is completely against
the spirit of Christmas to produce ornaments in sweatshop factories
where the workers are physically abused and financially cheated. We
need to get serious about keeping the products of foreign sweatshops
off American shelves. And we shouldn’t wait until next year’s holiday
season rolls around before we take action.” http://www.nlcnet.org/article.php?id=499
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