MGA refutes Bratz sweatshop story
By Tina Benitez -- Playthings, 12/26/2006 12:04:00 PM
NEW YORK—MGA Entertainment is denying accusations that working conditions at a factory complex in mainland China where Bratz dolls are produced amount to sweatshop labor.
Isaac Larian, CEO of MGA Entertainment, Van Nuys, Calif., tells Playthings the facilities in question—which do make Bratz dolls as well as products for other toy manufacturers, he says—have higher working conditions than those described in a report issued last week by the National Labor Committee, a New York-based non-governmental watchdog group.
“MGA uses first-rate factories in the Orient to make its goods,” says Larian. “The same factories make products for the world’s biggest toy manufacturers.”
According the report (http://www.nlcnet.org/live/article.php?id=197), there are approximately 4,000 men and women who work at the Hua Tai 4K factory complex in Guangdong Province, part of the Hong Kong-based Hua Cheng Group, which runs several factories in mainland China. The report stated that workers are paid 17 cents for each doll they assemble; that some workers are forced to work seven-day weeks of up to 94 hours, denied work injury or health insurance and cannot take off sick days; and are docked five hours’ wages if they break a doll during production.
The report, conducted in collaboration with China Labor Watch, includes detailed interviews with workers documenting working conditions at Hua Tai 4K as well as contradictory interviews with the workers in Guangdong conducted by monitors from Wal-Mart.
Representatives from Hua Cheng Group could not be reached for comment. The company is not listed as a current recipient of a seal of approval from the International Council of Toy Industries’ ICTI CARE program, a sanctioning process designed to ensure fair labor treatment and safe working conditions at toy production facilities worldwide.
Charles Kernaghan, director of the National Labor Committee, tells Playthings that his group would like to see companies like MGA, for whom Hua Tai 4K factory employees have said they manufactured the most products, to step up and put pressure on the group that owns the factory to change the way it treats its workers.
"[Factory groups] have said there will be improvements, but we still don’t see them. MGA,…and other people who distribute these products, have to step up and put pressure on the factory,” Kernaghan says.
