By Robyn Blumner
The Columbus Dispatch
Monday 05 November 2007

The Gap responded by agreeing not to sell any of the garments from the work order identified by the newspaper and reiterating that it has a "rigorous factory-monitoring program" to police against the use of child labor.

One is left to wonder, however, if a newspaper can smoke out a Gap-sponsored sweatshop, why couldn't the company's own auditors?

These working conditions wouldn't be any more palatable if someone 19 years old were subjected to them. Sweatshops, where workers are forced to work long hours, breathing toxic air, for pay that doesn't begin to cover basic needs, are a kind of ubiquitous evil in the developing world.

But what happens over there has everything to do with what happens here. American toy and apparel companies and retailers such as Wal-Mart are largely responsible for allowing this kind of exploitation to flourish. They prime the pump and then fight against rules that would better the lot of workers.

One need look no further than the internal auditing documents on the Mattel toy company's Web site to see that the company knows what is going on and continues to profit from it.

Plant 18 in China's southern Guandong Province, isn't named, but its 2006 audit indicates that workers there are seriously mistreated. The audit found "important shortfalls" in "wages and working hours, health and safety standards, and environmental protection." The same problems were identified in an earlier review.

Workers were on the job up to 17 hours a day and some were forced to work 31 straight days. The report also found that the workers were exposed to "air, water and ground contamination," and there were serious questions about whether they were being cheated out of pay.

A Mattel spokesman claims they have "made headway with improvements."

Charles Kernaghan, director of the National Labor Committee, can give you an earful about Mattel's practices in China. In testimony last month before a Senate subcommittee, he laid out in rather stomach-turning detail the pound of flesh extracted from workers in the manufacture of a Barbie accessory toy at the Xin Yi factory in Shenzhen, a city near Hong Kong.

Last year, that factory's 5,000 workers were made to work seven days a week for months on end, with routine 15-hour days. In the steaming hot factory, workers were barred from standing during work hours. They had to sit on hard wood benches with no backs.

Things have improved slightly this year, according to Kernaghan, with a six-day workweek. Still, the workers report being regularly cheated out of the equivalent of two days' wages every week, even though their base wage is only 53 cents an hour.

Mattel claims it doesn't operate at the Xin Yi factory, one if its licensees does; nonetheless, it has "dispensed an audit team to the facility."

According to Kernaghan, Mattel has in the past sought and obtained special waivers in China so it could pay workers less than the legal minimum wage. It also has gotten waivers to allow it to force workers to do 32 hours of overtime a week - an amount that is 295 percent above China's legal limit.

Parents rightly reacted fiercely when lead paint was found on some of their children's Chinese-made toys. Now we just need that same intense anger on behalf of the young workers making them. We need some national consciousness-raising that will goose Congress into passing the Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act, a bill that would make it illegal to sell goods made in a sweatshop.

In the documentary Mardi Gras: Made in China, Mardi Gras revelers were shown video of the Chinese factory where young women toiled to make the very beads they now had piled around their necks. Most were seriously discomforted by the sight. Americans don't want to buy goods made by people forced to work to exhaustion, around toxic fumes, for unsustainable pay, even if that means a good bargain.

I believe that, truly.

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India Activists Decry Gap Child Labor
The Associated Press

Monday 29 October 2007

New Delhi - The Indian children reportedly found making clothes for Gap Inc. should be reunited with their families and compensated by the government, activists said Monday amid a spreading scandal about the use of child labor by the international clothing chain.

The reported discovery of children as young as 10 sewing clothes for clothing retailer Gap Inc. in a New Delhi factory has renewed concerns about child labor in India, but government officials offered no comment Monday.

"The biggest responsibility here lies with the Indian government - they don't develop a way of monitoring" factories, said Bhuwan Ribhu, a lawyer who works with Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or the Save Childhood Movement.

"International companies hire subcontractors and then forget about it. There is no monitoring at all," Ribhu added. "Where the Gap is concerned, at least they've taken a good pro-active stand against the subcontractors."

Britain's Observer newspaper on Sunday reported that it had found children making clothes with Gap labels in a squalid factory in New Delhi. It quoted the children as saying they were from poor parts of India and had been sold to the sweatshop by their impoverished families. Some said they were not paid for their work.

Gap responded quickly, saying the factory was being run by a subcontractor who was hired in violation of Gap's policies, and none of the products made there will be sold in its stores.

"We appreciate that the media identified this subcontractor, and we acted swiftly in this situation," Gap spokesman Bill Chandler told the Associated Press on Sunday. "Under no circumstances is it acceptable for children to produce or work on garments."

Child labor remains a widespread problem in India, despite the country's economic boom and its growing wealth.

The government has repeatedly tried to ban the use of child workers - in 1986 outlawing them from working in dangerous industries, such as glassmaking, and last year banning them being employed as domestic servants or in restaurants.

But the prohibitions have had only a minimal impact and children's rights activists estimate that 13 million children are still working in India, with many being used in labor-intensive businesses like carpet-weaving and in dangerous industries, such as making fire crackers.

Chandler said Gap requires its suppliers to guarantee that they will not use child labor to produce garments. Gap stopped working with 23 factories last year over violations uncovered by its inspectors.

The San Francisco-based company has 90 full-time inspectors who make unannounced visits around the world to ensure vendors are abiding by Gap's guidelines, he said.