We have strayed a bit afield here as usual, but as I understand the issue some collectors (not me) were concerned about the rising costs of KC and other manufacturer's products. I just pointed out the irony that so many jobs have gone to China in return for lower cost products that we are now being told costs must increase due to the creation of a labor shortage in that country. I have no idea about the working conditions at KC or other toy solider manufacturer factories in that country. Nevertheless, the notion that working conditions in China are generally favorable or that the workers are better off to have these jobs is so far removed from all evidence to the contrary as to negate any need to respond. In fact, it sounds a bit like the logic behind the good old days of colonization.
The Chinese labor report, issued by the National Labor Committee for Human Rights, details brutal working conditions in Chinese factories, where workers are paid wages as low as 3 cents per hour.
The committee found that some Chinese workers put in 98-hour work weeks and compulsory unpaid overtime. Furthermore, the report said, some factories placed a ban on talking during work hours and incorporated 24- hour prison-like surveillance. Most factories, said the committee, had a host of unsanitary working conditions.
For years, U.S. companies have claimed that their mere presence in China would help open that society to democratic values, the report said. But, far from promoting human rights, the record shows that U.S. companies and their contractors in China are actively involved in the systematic denial of worker rights.
Chinese factories routinely violate the most fundamental human and worker rights, and pay below subsistence wages, said the committee.
For example, the report documented that women working in the production of Timberland shoes at Pou Yuen Factory V, Zhongshan City in the country's Guangdong Province, typically work 14-hour days, seven days per week, during the busy seasons. The factory employs 16- and 17-year- old girls, pays them 22 cents per hour ($16.13 for 70-hour work weeks), and mandates excessively high daily production quotas that cannot be reached in eight hours.
Worse, the girls and women employed there are regularly cheated out of overtime pay, because all overtime work is mandatory and is either unpaid or compensated at just the standard piece rate, the report said.
Meanwhile, factory temperatures routinely soar above 100 degrees, and workers reported handling toxic glues and other solvents without gloves. They also complain of high dust levels, excessive noise and strong chemical odors, committee researchers found.
Workers are also threatened and coached to lie to U.S. company auditors. And as is standard practice in China, any workers attempting to defend their rights or form an independent union will be imprisoned.
China accounts for 60 percent of all the shoes imported to the U.S., with a retail value of $16.9 billion a year, the report said. And Timberland, specifically, posted record first-quarter revenue and earnings in April.
Footwear factory in China. Sixty percent of all shoes imported into the U.S. come from China.
Employees working at Qin Shi Handbag Factory, where they sew Kathie Lee [Gifford] handbags for Wal-Mart, fare even worse. There, workers are paid 1/10th of a cent per hour, or 8 cents per week (36 cents per month).
'Mr. C,' [from the] Henan Province, tarted working on July 22, 1999, receiving his August wages on September 30, earning $30.24 (251 rmb), said the report, which documented the pay of several workers at the Kathie Lee plant. This was the highest wage in the group, coming to $6.98 a week -- 8 cents an hour. However, the following month, he received only partial payment.
High walls and guard towers surround the Tae-Kyung factory where Fubu sneakers are made.
Pay for the top 14 percent of workers at Qin Shi was $18.10 per month, or just five cents per day, and nearly half the workers surveyed (46 percent) actually owed the company money after a month's work, said the report.
Other factories making other high-end products for the U.S. market have employees suffering similar conditions.
Top of the line Alpine car stereos, some costing up to $1,300 each, are made in China by young women who are paid 31 cents an hour and sit hunched over, staring into microscopes 9[product] hours a day, six days a week, soldering the fine pieces of the stereo, the report said. Above the women is an electronic scoreboard which monitors their progress in meeting their production quota of 720 stereos a day.
According to factory management, there is a 9[product] hour daily shift, from 8:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., six days a week, with an hour off for lunch, the report said. Though researchers could not independently confirm this with the workers ... if management was accurate, the workers would be in the factory 57 hours a week, while being paid for 51 hours.
China has a greater income disparity than the U.S., with the top 20 percent controlling nearly 53 percent of the country's wealth.
Though U.S. company executives argue that they and their factory contractors in China pay decent subsistence wages -- wages that are very competitive given the low cost of living in China, they say -- the committee disputed those claims.
Wages in China's export assembly industry do provide a subsistence level existence if it is meant in the sense that H.H. Cutler's CEO said of the 28-cent-an-hour wages they paid in Haiti: 'Well, the workers are alive aren't they? So they must be subsistence wages,' said the committee.
And that is precisely the point, researchers argued.
The factory workers in China do survive on their wages because they work 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week during peak seasons, often with just one day off a month, researchers said. They survive because most factory workers are migrants from rural areas who, once they arrive at the factory, are housed 10 to 20 people to one small, crowded company dorm room. For the years they are at the factory, their 'home' is a 2 1/2 by 2 1/2 by 6 1/2-foot space on a metal bunk bed. They subsist on two or three dismal meals a day provided at the factory canteen.
The committee said that averaging factory pay among all industries amounts to about $65 per month. But to maintain a very modest diet for a three-person family costs approximately $72.29 a month, which is more than most factory workers earn.
To substantiate arguments encouraging U.S. lawmakers to grant China permanent normal trade status, North American companies claim their presence in China would set an example of respect for human and worker rights, and that this example would spread throughout China.
But committee researchers also debunked this conventional wisdom, saying that -- for example -- companies like Wal-Mart have been in China for a decade, but workers are still treated much like indentured servants. At the Kathie Lee factory, many [workers] did not even have the bus fare to leave to look for other work, and when they protested the grueling mandatory overtime work for literally pennies an hour, or nothing at all, 800 workers were fired, said the committee report.
Why is the NEW Panzer IV Tank DAK is Expensive ; when the First Panzer IV DAK ( Long Barrel) was less Expensive! I would think this NEW DAK Panzer IV, would be Moderately Priced? Also, the K & C Tunisian Tiger I , is still available with most Dealer's and this was supposed to be LIMITED? Also, Honour Bound is way too much Money to Spend on their Armor and their Figure's! I could understand, that they're a small Company, but the EconomyToday, is getting worse for Everyone! If things don't change hopefully soon, then Many of us Toy Collector's, will not be Buying as Much as Previously! Their is other Commodities, which have Higher Priority's than Buying Expensive Toys!
