Disney probes alleged labour abuses at Chinese plants

Walt Disney today said it had hired an auditor to investigate claims its Chinese contractors paid workers below the minimum wage, demanded excessive overtime and cheated labour monitors by faking pay slips.

Disney said it had asked the non-profit firm Verite to probe allegations by the Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour, a new group aimed at protecting Chinese workers’ rights, in it’s report titled Recovering Mickey’s Conscience – an apparent reference to Disney’s most famous cartoon character, Mickey Mouse.

The allegations come a month before the opening of Hong Kong Disneyland, which Disney hopes will draw throngs of tourists from mainland China.

“Disney and its licensees will work closely with Verite to ensure a thorough investigation of these claims and take the appropriate actions to remedy violations found,” a Disney statement said.

It said it had previously found and addressed international labour standard violations at some factories named in the Hong Kong group’s report, and that those offences were not as serious as the latest claims.

The report said a factory making Disney stationery in the southern city of Dongguan paid workers 2.69 Chinese yuan (27c) an hour until June, when it promised to raise the rate to Dongguan’s minimum of 3.43 yuan (35c).

But the factory, run by Hong Kong’s Nord Race Paper International, put off paying workers their June salaries until the end of August, said the report, which claims to be based on worker interviews.

It said a worker at the Nord Race facility allegedly put in 383 hours this past March, exceeding the 204-hour legal limit.

The factory also failed to triple hourly pay on holidays as required, the report said.

At the Hung Hing printing factory in Shenzhen, run by a Hong Kong company of the same name, workers put in 12-hour days but were only paid for 10, the report said.

It also said that industrial accidents were common at the Hung Hing factory. A machine reportedly compressed a worker to death in 2002, and a falling piece of equipment crushed the waist of another worker in a non-fatal mishap in 2005.

The report also claimed factories coached workers on how to answer auditors’ questions.

The Nord Race factory allegedly issued fake time slips while concealing the real ones showing illegal hours, the report said.