k kiln ‘slavery’ exposé follows Olympic child labour report
Corporate Social Responsibility | Labour and Migration | Law and Rights | Livelihoods | Media
Senior Chinese officials vowed to act on an international NGO and trade union report alleging abusive practices in four Pearl Delta factories contracted to produce goods for the 2008 Olympics, even as the report was overshadowed by shocking revelations of forced child labour in brick kilns in the provinces of Henan and Shanxi.
“No Medal for the Olympics on Labour Rights,” published by the PlayFair 2008 campaign, ‘named and shamed’ a Taiwan-owned stationery company and three Hong Kong-owned factories producing sports bags and headwear in Shenzhen. All four companies had been licensed by the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) to supply merchandise for the Olympics.
PlayFair’s report alleges cases of “child labour, excessive working hours, routine underpayment of wages, and blatant disregard of Chinese labour laws.”
The child labour charge was levelled at the Rekit Stationery Company where an undercover investigator who took a job at the factory reported that more than 20 children aged 12-16 were hired during school holidays to work 13-hour shifts on packing lines.
According to PlayFair, three out of the four factories investigated were paying less than the legal minimum wage—in the case of Yue Wing Cheong Light Products Ltd, less than half the statutory minimum. The report also highlights compulsory overtime, unhealthy workplace conditions and heavy fines for workers who report for work late or take time off.
Executive Vice President of BOCOG, Jiang Xiaoyu (蒋效愚), said in Hong Kong on June 11 that he took the allegations seriously and that “If any factory is found to have broken the law it will be punished.”
Foreign Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang (秦刚), told a June 12 press conference that BOCOG upholds “very strict labour rights and social responsibility standards” and that licensees who violate those standards will be “punished severely.”
Chinese media and websites widely interpreted these official responses as meaning that BOCOG will revoke the four companies’ licenses to produce Olympics merchandise.
“We feel that is exactly the wrong response,” PlayFair campaigner Ineke Zeldenrust told China Development Brief in a telephone interview. “The [global] brands have already learned that to deny and to cut and run is exactly the wrong kind of response. We’re looking for a different response, a structural response.”
At present, Zeldenrust argues, “If the [BOCOG] orders go elsewhere we have zero guarantees that it will be any different.”
The PlayFair report had likewise suggested that conditions in the factories investigated were typical rather than exceptional, “no different from those which prevail in many thousands of workplaces scattered throughout China.”
Brands steady at the helm
Representatives of two major sportswear brands, Adidas and Nike, acknowledge that the conditions described in the PlayFair report are quite familiar in supply chains but say they are making headway with their own codes of conduct and plan no special action in light of publicity surrounding the Beijing Olympics.
William Anderson, Adidas’ Head of Social and Environmental Affairs for the Asia Pacific, said in a phone interview that in 2004 Reebok, which has since been acquired by Adidas, sourced from one of the factories named in the PlayFair report. But, he continued, Adidas “terminated the business relationship because we had issues with excessive working hours and no proper employment record keeping.”
Sonya Durkin-Jones, Nike’s Corporate Responsibility Compliance Director for North Asia, wrote in an email to China Development Brief that Nike had sourced periodically from the same factory from 2001 until February 2007, when “the factory was deactivated from our sourcing base for business
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