Disney looks into abuse claims

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Disney looks into abuse claims

The company sends a team to China to examine practices at a stuffed-toy factory.

The Associated Press
November 8, 2007

HONG KONG - The Walt Disney Co. has sent a team to investigate allegations of labor abuse at a stuffed-toy factory in southern China, the entertainment giant said Wednesday.

Hong Kong-based labor activists allege hundreds of workers at the Tianyu Toys factory in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan worked up to 16 hours a day with two days off a month.

"During the peak season, before Christmas, workers at the factory start at 8 a.m. and don't finish until midnight," Jenny Chan, an activist with Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, told The Associated Press.

The group said it had carried out an undercover survey of the factory in which employees had spoken of forced overtime and illegal pay levels. The factory owner denied its workers were being mistreated.

Alannah Goss, spokeswoman for Walt Disney Co. (Asia Pacific) Ltd., confirmed that Tianyu Toys supplied goods to some of its licensees.

She said a team of auditors had been sent to the factory to investigate the claims and that they would report back in the coming days.

"Whenever we hear of these allegations, we take them very seriously," she said.

The activist group has previously accused factories in southern China that create goods for Disney and other global brands of overworking laborers and skimping on pay and benefits.