New Delhi, Jan 15: A US-based labour rights group China Labor Watch (CLW) has said that it uncovered evidence of worker exploitation at a factory of Chinese toy company Pop Mart, forcing employees to sign blank cheques and work overtime.
China Labor Watch said in a report that investigators who spent three months at Shunjia Toys factory in Xinfeng county, in south-east China’s Jiangxi province, found “workers routinely signed blank labour contracts.”
The report cited “16- and 17-year-olds being employed without the special protections for young workers required by Chinese law, inadequate health and safety training and other labour rights violations.”
The factory supplies Labubus, from the popular “the Monsters” toy line made by Pop Mart.
The 16- to 18-year-old workers at Shunjia had been assigned to standard assembly line positions with no difference in workload or production targets to adult workers, the report said.
The NGO said it interviewed over 50 employees, including three under 18, and that all worked exclusively on Labubus production. The factory employs more than 4,500 people.
“The underage workers also generally did not understand the nature of the contracts they signed and had no clear concept of their legal status when asked,” CLW’s report said.
The group said employees were given unrealistic production targets, with teams of 25 to 30 workers expected to assemble at least 4,000 Labubus figures a day. CLW said workers often logged more than 100 hours of overtime a month, far above the legal monthly limit of 36 hours.
“Existing supply-chain oversight mechanisms do not appear sufficient to identify and prevent these labour issues in a timely and effective manner. If Pop Mart is serious about reducing labor risks in the Labubu supply chain, it should establish accessible grievance and communication mechanisms for workers,” Li Qiang, the executive director of CLW, was quoted as saying.
However, Pop Mart denied allegations saying it took welfare and safety of workers at our [original equipment manufacturers] factories very seriously.
“We conduct regular, standardised audits of our OEM supply chain partners, including annual independent third-party audits carried out by internationally recognised professional audit firms,” the spokesperson of the company said.
—IANS