Disney to Probe Chinese Worker Complaints
|
WASHINGTON, D.C., Aug 22 (OneWorld) - The Walt Disney Co. has asked an outside auditor to investigate reports that its Chinese contractors pay workers below minimum wage, demand excessive overtime, and hide their violations from labor monitors by issuing false pay slips.
Disney said Friday it has hired the nonprofit firm Verite to probe allegations by the Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) in a report released late last week and titled ''Recovering Mickey's Conscience.'' Additionally, the U.S.-based activist group National Labor Committee released videos and research papers in support of claims that the Disney contractors forced workers into 15-hour shifts, violated minimum-wage laws, and allowed dangerous conditions resulting in widespread worker injuries at factories that produce children's books and stationery for Disney. Disney denied the accusations, saying in a statement that it ''conducts regular social compliance audits of the independently run factories that produce Disney branded merchandise.'' Even so, the company said, ''Disney and its licensees will work closely with Verite to ensure a thorough investigation of these claims and take the appropriate actions to remediate violations found.'' The allegations come in the run up to the Sep. 12 opening of Hong Kong Disneyland, which is expected to attract millions of Chinese tourists. The SACOM report said a stationery factory in southern China operated by Hong Kong-based Nord Race Paper International Ltd. paid workers 2.69 Chinese yuan (33 cents) per hour until June, when it promised to raise the rate to the local minimum of 3.43 yuan (42 cents). However, the factory put off paying workers their salaries for June until the end of August, the report said, adding that factory employees worked 383 hours in March, exceeding the 204-hour legal limit. The Nord Race factory allegedly issued false time slips while concealing the real ones showing illegal hours and also failed to triple hourly pay on holidays as required, the report added. Nord Race, in a statement cited by the Associated Press, denied some of the accusations, said it complies fully with Chinese labor laws, and added that it had previously found and addressed international labor standard violations at some factories identified in the SACOM report. Responding to the report's allegation that employees were coached on how to answer auditors' questions, Nord Race said its workers are poorly educated and the company explains their rights to them. According to SACOM, employees at another factory also run by a Hong Kong-based company worked 12-hour days but were only paid for 10. The report alleged that industrial accidents are common. Severe examples cited included the death in 2002 of a worker reportedly compressed by a machine, and the 2005 injury of a worker whose waist was crushed by a falling piece of equipment. The National Labor Committee (NLC) sought to set alleged violations involving pay, hours, and safety in what it described as a larger context of abuse. ''In some factories, women are denied their legal maternity rights. Eight to 12 workers are housed in primitive dorm rooms sleeping on double level bunk beds and fed horrible food at the factory canteen,'' the NLC said. ''Workers have no health insurance, no pension, no rights.'' Hong Kong-based SACOM, echoing longstanding demands of mainland China-based labor rights groups, said it wants Disney to use nonprofit auditors as a matter of course and make public findings on labor abuses and industrial accidents. The NLC said Chinese groups have further called on Disney to release the names and addresses of its contractors throughout China and to allow SACOM and other human, women's, and labor rights groups access to these plants to train workers on their rights and on how to monitor employers' compliance ''so they can play the key role in monitoring these factories. This will bring an end to the violations.'' SACOM said its report was based on interviews with workers from four factories on the mainland. |
Printable version
Back to top
