Disney toy workers in China rebel against low pay (News Feature)

By Simon Parry and Hazel Parry Jan 9, 2008, 3:07 GMT

Shenzhen, China - There are no Disney figurines in the family home of Mr Huang the toymaker. He used to spend up to 17 hours a day making them but never had time to make a single one for his own children.

'My daughter is nine and my son is seven and they both used to really love the Disney characters,' said the 40-year-old from Hunan province. 'My daughter's favourite was Snow White, and my son loved Woody the cowboy from Toy Story.

'They would see the Disney characters on TV and I used to be proud to tell them I was responsible for making the figures that they sell in shops. I promised them 'One day I will make one for each of you'.

'But I never had the time. I gave every waking minute to my job in the factory instead - and now my children are too old.'

Huang is a former sculptor from the Haowei factory in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen - where millions of Disney-branded toys are made for export all over the world.

He would spend between two days and two weeks making original moulds for mass-produced Disney plastic toys, working from photographs of characters from films like Pirates of the Caribbean and Beauty and the Beast to sculpt models out of heated plastic.

In February last year, Huang and four colleagues walked out on their jobs and started legal action against Haowei for 100,000 US dollars in unpaid wages and overtime. They claim they worked up to 347 hours a month even though the legal maximum under Chinese labour law is 40 hours a week plus 36 hours overtime per month.

One of the five, 30-year-old Chen - an art college graduate from Fujian province who worked at Haowei for five years - showed a factory work log recording how in December 2006 he would start at 8 am and finish as late as midnight every day.

He worked seven days a week with only Saturday evenings off, clocking up 269.5 hours and another 77.5 hours of overtime, his log shows.

Including overtime, the sculptors earned up to 450 US dollars a month - three times what production line workers in the factory could earn - but say they were worked so hard at illegally low rates of pay and overtime that they decided to take a stand. Hundreds more lower-paid workers went on strike to protest against pay and conditions in September.

'When I first did this job I was excited and proud of what I was doing,' said Chen. 'As a Chinese worker, I know I will never have the opportunity to travel by airplane - but the toys that I made did. They went to children all over the world and that used to make me happy.'

The sculptors took their case to the Labour Bureau and were initially offered two months' compensation. They rejected the offer and, weeks after September's worker unrest, won a ruling in the district-level court that they were entitled to a reassessment of their compensation. They are still waiting for a settlement.

For Chen, it is much more than a matter of money. 'People should boycott Disney toys,' he said. 'As workers, we would never buy Disney toys for our children because we know they are made at such an extreme cost to workers. We hope parents overseas will stop buying Disney toys for their children too.'

Huang said: 'Disney says its contractors should obey the local labour laws and safeguard labour rights. Those laws haven't been obeyed but Disney continues to give orders to Haowei. We never saw anyone from Disney come to check the factory.'

Overtime pay and conditions at Haowei, which employed over 1,000 workers but has since reduced its workforce as it prepares to move to a new site in the nearby city of Dongguan, have improved since the September strike, workers say.

However, Hong Kong-based pressure group Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM) point out that the amount of money deducted from workers' pay packets for accommodation and food has been simultaneously increased, leaving workers little better off.

SACOM last weekend sent a letter to Disney chief executive officer Roger Iger demanding that the company ensures that the Chinese factories it uses follow local labour laws.

'Disney completely fails to identify and resolve labour rights violations in its supply chain,' the letter says, pointing out that the company recording 34.3 billion US dollars in sales in 2006 should 'do better.'

The letter calls on Disney to enforce its international code of conduct at factories in southern China, to give every Chinese worker a copy of the code of conduct in Mandarin and to disclose a full list of outsourcing suppliers.

A senior official at the Haowei factory, who declined to be named, admitted in a telephone interview there was 'a lot of room for improvement' in labour conditions but said the factory was working with Disney to provide better conditions.

Referring to the case brought by the five workers, he said: 'We are still contesting the case ... The court is investigating the issue and hasn't yet made a judgement. It's not appropriate to say if we are at fault or if they are at fault.

'These men designed and made moulds for the toys. They had to work a lot of overtime because the whole factory production line was waiting for those moulds. When they finished their work, they had free time.'

A Disney spokesperson said violations of labour laws had been identified by Disney inspectors in June and 'corrective action' had been taken.

'We believe that the efforts made so far together with the continued commitment of the licensee ...will lead to long term sustainable compliance at the factory following its relocation to a new site.'

For the toymakers fighting back over their treatment, the experience has left a profound impact. 'I felt like a machine while I was in that factory,' said Chen. 'I lost my passion for the work I did and I lost my passion for life. Now I just want to help people caught in the same situation I was in.'