Anti-Corporate Globalization Campaign
Christmas Toys and Child Labor: Anti-Globalization Campaign - Grand Rapids, Michigan
December 2003
It's Christmas time of year here in the United States which means Americans will be spending billions of dollars on toys. One of the ugliest aspects of globalization is that the plastic playthings Americans buy for their children are often made by third world children working in sweatshop conditions. Over 50 percent of all toys sold by Wal-Mart, Mattel, Hasbro, Disney and Toys R Us are made In China. “Made in China” often means made by children working in unsafe environments for exploitative wages. During the "busy season" in China, three million toy workers— mostly young women— will be locked inside 2,800 factories. They will be forced to work 15 hours a day, seven days a week, thirty days a month, handling toxic chemicals with their bare hands, while they are paid wages as low as 12 cents an hour making toys for our holiday season.
Typical Toy Factory in China:
- Mandatory daily shifts of 15 hours or more, from 8:00 a.m. to after midnight and sometimes past 2 a.m. or 3 a.m.
- Forced to work seven days a week for two months straight, without a day off.
- Paid 12 cents an hour, for 105 hours a week.
- Cheated out of overtime pay.
- Wages paid two months late.
- Fined three days' pay for missing a night shift due to exhaustion. >
- Fined for more than five minutes in bathroom.
- Fined for failing to meet production quotas.
- Air thick with fibers, temperature above 90 degrees.
- Total suppression of right to organize.
- Company monitoring inspections always announced in advance.
- Many factories not "monitored" at all.
From the report "Toys of Misery" at the National Labor Committee website.
Let the big toy companies know that these labor practices are not acceptable!
For information on how you can be heard, go to National Labor Committee Campaign/China
For more on Child Labor in China, read The hidden downside of Santa's little helpers from Global Exchange
Links on Child Labor World Wide
- CLEA Child Labor Education and Action Project
- Child Labor Coalition
- Child Workers in Asia
- Free the Children
- International Labour Organization
- PANGAEA
Sweatshop Labor Links
- Sweatshop Watch
- Campaign for Labor Rights
- International Labour Organization
- Human Rights for Workers
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