Child Slave Labor in China
Thu May 01, 2008 at 08:10:20 AM PDT
Cross-posted at Fussbucket
If toxic paint wasn't enough of a reason to boycott toys made in China, an article in today's NY Times says that hundreds and maybe thousands of children in China have been sold to work as slave laborers in booming coastal factory cities.
Authorities in southern Guangdong Province, near Hong Kong, said they had already rescued more than 100 children from factories in Dongguan, a huge manufacturing city known for producing and exporting toys, textiles and electronics. The children, mostly 13 to 15 years old, were often tricked or kidnapped by employment agencies working in an impoverished part of western Sichuan Province, and then sent to factory towns in Guangdong, where they were often forced to work as much as 300 hours a month for little money, according to government officials and accounts from the state-owned media.
The new child labor case “is quite typical,” said Hu Xingdou, a professor of economics and social policy at the Beijing Institute of Technology. “China’s economy is developing at a fascinating speed, but often at the expense of laws, human rights and environmental protection.” Professor Hu also said that sometimes the children were sold by their parents who didn't know of the working conditions.
The child labor scandal was uncovered by Southern Metropolis Daily, a crusading newspaper based in Guangzhou, in southern China, less than a year after the authorities said they had rescued hundreds of people, including children, from working as “slave laborers” in brick kilns in the north and central part of the country. Many of the workers in that case also said they had been kidnapped.
Young people can legally go to work in factories when they turn 16, the article says. In a series of articles this week, the Southern Metropolis Daily said recruiters and labor agencies working in Liangshan often transported children south and then “sold” them to factories at virtual auctions in Guangdong Province, one of China’s biggest manufacturing centers and home to a huge population of migrant workers. At some coastal factories, children were even lined up and selected based on their body type, the journalists wrote.
The newspaper also alleged that when the children were paid, they received about three renminbi per hour, or about 43 cents, far below the local minimum wage, about 64 cents an hour. By law, overtime pay is much higher.
The Chinese paper said that some children had been threatened with death if they tried to escape from labor recruiters. The newspaper did not identify the coastal factories where the children worked, but the report said that one was a toy factory in Dongguan.
Okay, what the hell? This is horrible. I don't even know what to say. Anyone?
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