International Occupational Health Hazards

[Guest guest]

All the information concerning the City Toys case is now available at our

anti-Mc's website at

http://www.geocities.com/mc_shame.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Monina

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Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee (HKCIC) 704-5, 57 Peking

Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR T#: (852) 2366 5860

F#: (852) 2724 5098 E-mail: hkcic@... URL:

http://www.cic.org.hk

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Appeal on the Global Anti-Mc's Day Stop abuses of toy

workers in China Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee

Since 1970s, combining meals and toys into one package has

been a major promotional tactics of the fast food industry. The

momentum of this promotional strategy came to its peak in the 90s

when big global fast food chains like Mc's launched massive

Happy Meal promotional campaigns of licensed characters. Global,

cross industry alliances between entertainment and fast food TNCs

like Disney, Warner Brothers, Hasbro, Ty and Mcs, are

forged to dominate the eating and fun habits of consumers

worldwide.

To defend its global market share from its competitors,

promotional toys, especially in limited production, play a more

and more important role in Mc's business strategies.

Whether it was Teanie Beanie in the US, Hello Kitty in Taiwan and

Singapore, or Snoopy in Hong Kong and Europe, we still remember

the frenzy they had caused. The company sold out 100 million Ty

Teanie Beanie Baby toys in less than two weeks in 1997. In Hong

Kong and Singapore, teenagers were in long queues outside

Mc's stores to snap up Snoopy and Hello Kitty toys. While

these toys, say plastic Snoopy toys, were sold at HKD38 (around

USD4.7), they were produced by young female Chinese workers at

RMB24 (less than USD3) a day.

To exploit the abundant supply of cheap and " manageable "

labor, most of the promotional toys of Mc's are procured

through a marketing and sourcing company called Simon Marketing

and manufactured by contracting factories in China. In 1997,

Mc's spent RMB1 billion (USD120.9 million) in domestic

procurements in China. This included the purchase of 1.3 billion

toys many of which are used by Mc's around the world.

In the July and August visits to City Toys, one of these

contracting toy factories for Mc's in Shenzhen, Guangdong

province, massive violations of labor rights were found. Of

around 2000 workers there at City Toys, most of them were young

women. These female workers were not insured; nor did they sign

any contract with the factory. They worked an unlimited number of

hours at a fixed rate of RMB24 (less than USD3) depending on the

size of the orders. Toiling till 2 to a.m. was the common scene

when the factory was rushing the orders of plastic Snoopy toys

for Mc's in 1998 and 1999. To make up for the high turnover

rate due to intolerable working conditions, child workers under

16 were recruited this summer from a nearby town.

When the HKCIC and the local newspaper, the South China

Morning Post, disclosed the story of this contracting factory of

Mc's on 27 August 2000, the corporation denied all the

allegations. The corporation claimed that it had a labor code and

a well functioning monitoring system which found nothing wrong

with City Toys in its latest investigation. An investigation team

was sent to City Toys the next day and despite our warning to the

corporation against dismissing and penalizing the workers of City

Toys, hundreds of workers, underage or not, were found to have

been laid off without proper notice or compensation. Mc's

washed its hands by " supporting Simon Marketing (the promotion

marketing company) 's decision to halt production orders with

City Toys. " That means Mc's had nothing to do with the

abuses of City Toys workers; nor has it any responsibility for

those laid off or would-be-laid-off workers subsequently.

Since the release of the report in August, we have been

receiving inquiries from the media, concerned unions and NGOs all

over the world about the City Toys case and follow up actions. We

are impressed by the anti-Mc's campaigns worldwide which

cover multiple aspects of the exploitation of the environment and

store workers done by the corporation. Yet the abuses of tens of

thousands of toy workers manufacturing promotional toys that

boast the sales and stock price of Mc's were missing in all

these campaigns. As the corporation relies more and more on its

toy promotional strategies to maintain the global market share,

more and more licensing with giant entertainment TNCs is

anticipated. The result is not just huge profits reaped by these

TNCs, but more exploitation, and forgetting of the exploitation

of these toy workers in China.

We would strongly urge concerned unions, labor organizations

and anti-Mcs campaigners, to pass on the labor abuses of

Mc's toys workers to your community, demonstrate your

protest to the corporation and extend your support to the Chinese

workers on 16 October, the global anti-Mc's day.

We would like you to demonstrate your anguish with us to

Mc's and demand them to :

(1) Rehabilitate the child workers at City Toys Because they

had been laboring for Mc's whether it admitted it or not.

Mc's had abused their labor and thus had responsibility for

them.

(2) Reinstate the workers of City Toys Because we can no more

tolerate the TNCs, which protected by the contracting system, can

always wash their hands clean by laying all the blame on the

contractors and shift to a " cleaner " one without paying a penny

to redress the abuses they have committed to the workers. We

should not let workers be penalized.

(3) Pay a decent wage to the Chinese toy workers Despite

having the Chinese labor law which states the minimum wage and

pay rate for over time work in different Chinese provinces, very

often than not they are not abided to in reality. Nor do TNCs

care about it and Mc's is no exception. And the reason

Mc's buys toys from China is because labor is cheap.

Mc's should pay to measure up to its concern for labor

which it claims to be central to the corporation.

(4) Let workers participate in labor rights monitoring Like

other TNCs, Mc's labor code, which it claims to have one,

is something in the superstructure, important for the company's

public relation but too remote and totally irrelevant to workers

at the workplace. That the company's internal social auditor,

SGS, found nothing wrong with City Toys this May demonstrates the

irony of such labor rights monitoring that involves no workers.

If Mc's really wants to, as it says, do everything to

ensure that similar thing would not happen again, let workers

monitor their work place now!

The HKCIC, together with the Asia Monitor Resource Center,

Green Peace Hong Kong and the Confederation of Trade Union will

be staging an anti-Mc's protest on 15 October in Hong Kong.

We will make the above demands regarding the City Toys case to

Mc's and protest against the corporation's selling GE food

and paying an hourly rate of HKD11 (USD1.4) to local store

workers.

This appeal will be sent to McSpotlight to be posted for

wider circulation. The City Toys report regarding the working

conditions of Chinese toy workers for Mc's is available at

our anti-Mc's website at :

http://www.geocities.com/mc_shame Please let us know if you would

pick up the issue and organize some actions on the Chinese

workers. And if you have any inquiries about our report and

actions, please feel free to contact our researcher Monina Wong

at hkcic@....

Proposed Actions for anti-Mc's campaigns

Since the release of our toy report on Mc's, the HKCIC

has been approached by concerned parties and unions on solidarity

actions for the Chinese workers. If City Toys is not an isolated

case, we would like to put it in a larger framework to generate

stronger momentum for future campaigns.

(I) Workers' Solidarity Mc's is notorious for labor

abuses. Workers preparing food at Mc's stores are no

different from factory workers. Worse still, they were further

exploited by the part-time, low-pay employment which makes

unionizing almost impossible. Anti-Mc's campaigns have

focused much on labor abuses of store workers while leaving

workers of Mc's suppliers like toy and logistics very much

in the dark. While store workers get HKD11.5 (less than USD1.5)

an hour in Hong Kong, the Chinese toy workers are paid at an

hourly rate as low as RMB2 (USD0.25). A global sourcing strategy

means that a TNC like Mc's has the advantage of buying from

countries which has the weakest unionizing power and contractors

that produce at the cheapest price.

The fate of both store workers and contracted toy workers in

China (and Vietnam) for Mc's are the same. While store

workers in Europe are able to fight for a higher hourly rate

through organized actions, fraternal support for the manufacture

workers of Mc's contracted suppliers, especially where

workers' union is absent, is very important.

Things you can do : (1) Go to Mc's stores and tell your

community about how Mc's toys are made and how it exploits

workers not only at home but abroad through the contracting

system. (2) Send fax, email or protest letters to Mc's

headquarters at Illinois demanding a better pay for toy workers

in China. Tom Albrecht Senior Vice President and Chief Purchasing

Officer Mc's Corporation Oak Brook, Illinois United States

of America

(II) Info Network While information on both company

performance and the devastation done by the corporation on the

environment, labor and community development are well-documented

in Europe and the US, little information on the Asia-Pacific is

known. Such difference is of course is a measure of the strength

of campaigns and struggles in different parts of the world. The

Asia-Pacific is less vocal in anti-Mc's campaigns despite

its taking up a bigger and bigger share of the corporation's food

and toy market especially regarding China.

It is time that an information network on the performance,

like sales and profits, sales of promotional toys, marketing

strategies, number of workers employed in the Asia-Pacific etc,

be built. A typology of the pay rate of store workers in

different Asian countries can be sketched. While the impact and

workers and consumers' reaction to Mcization, its impact on

community development, people's eating and fun habits and

workers' life etc can be documented. Such a data base will be

important to support further campaigns in the Asia-Pacific.

Things you can do : (1) You can post relevant information or

opinion on our anti-Mc's website at

http://www.geocities.com/mc_shame (2) Labor, environmental and

consumer NGOs in the region are welcome to send their research

and findings, like the sourcing of Mc's food, logistics and

toy supply, the working conditions of both store and manufacture

workers to us. These will solidify TNC researches for interested

parties. It is hoped that such a data base can be a support base

for campaigns in the Asia-Pacific.

(III) Subverting the Mc's share holders meeting We are

also looking into the possibility of raising the City Toys case

and Chinese toy workers in the annual shareholders meeting of

Mc's. Protests outside and inside the shareholders' meeting

will of course gain more international publicity. Raising labor

issues during the shareholders' meeting forces the Mc's

headquarters to throw more transparency on its sourcing,

procurement and labor policy.

Things you can do : (1) We are still working to identify

individuals or NGOs that hold Mc's shares. You are welcome

to provide us with further information in this area. (2)

Strategies on how to launch further actions during the annual

meeting of Mc's are welcomed.

All the reports of the HKCIC on Mc's toy contractors

and the stories of labor abuse covered by the South China Morning

Post are available on our anti-Mc's website

http://www.geocities.com/mc_shame. You can email us at

hkcic@...

In Solidarity!