Cutting Costs at a Dangerous Price
“Wal-Mart’s not addressing the larger problem of why Chinese toy suppliers are cutting corners with lead paint and melamine,” spokesman Nu Wexler said, referring to a harmful additive found in pet food made in China. “It’s because they’re under enormous pressure from buyers like Wal-Mart, and they’re sacrificing child safety to keep costs low.”
Wal-Mart Tightens Toy-Safety Program [Washington Post]
Wal-Mart officials said yesterday they were asking toy suppliers to submit recent safety documentation or re-test their products in response to the wave of recalled merchandise from China that has cast a shadow over the upcoming holiday shopping season.
The efforts are part of a five-step plan to improve safety that the company is calling the Toy Safety Net Program. It has promised to work with the Toy Industry Association, a trade group, on new safety standards later this month and help Chinese leaders who are implementing new testing procedures.
“We know this is an issue at the top of mind with our customers, and we know we can play a role to reassure them that we have great, safe toys in our stores,” said Laura Phillips, Wal-Mart’s merchandise manager overseeing toys.About 80 percent of the toys sold in the United States are made in China. Phillips said the majority of toys on Wal-Mart’s shelves are manufactured there but declined to give a specific figure. The Bentonville, Ark., retailer controls roughly one-third of the U.S. toy market, according to Eric Johnson, a management professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Friday, August 24 | 7 comments | Permalink
Wal-Mart Addresses Mounting Criticism for Harmful Toys
Wal-Mart steps up toy testing [Associated Press via BusinessWeek]
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is stepping up testing and safety reviews of the toys it sells to reassure consumers ahead of the critical holiday season after a series of recalls of Chinese-made toys over hazards to children.
Wal-Mart’s top toy executive said Thursday the retailer will ask manufacturers to resubmit testing documentation for toys already on the shelves or in shipment, so that Wal-Mart can double-check the results.
The world’s largest retailer is also increasing the number of toys tested at independent labs by about 25 to 50 percent, or an average of 200 additional items daily.
“Reassurance is really our key point,” Laura Phillips, Wal-Mart’s merchandise manager of toys, told The Associated Press in a phone interview.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Thursday, August 23 | 0 comments | Permalink
Factory Owner a “Victim” Of Loose Regulations and Demand for Cheap Goods
It’s not just assembly-line workers being taken advantage of in China:
Mr. Zhang was a victim, too — of his own duplicitous suppliers, of China’s faulty supply chains, and of the pressures of its loosely regulated brand of capitalism, where Chinese entrepreneurs feel squeezed between Western companies’ appetite for cheap goods and the fierce local competition to satisfy it.
Scandal and Suicide in China: A Dark Side of Toys [New York Times]
They found the body hanging on the third floor of the Lee Der toy factory.
Zhang Shuhong, a 52-year-old businessman, had apparently committed suicide, just days after Mattel blamed his company, Lee Der Industrial, in Foshan, in southern China, for the recall of one million toys coated in toxic lead paint.In a summer of high-profile recalls of Chinese exports — pet food, shellfish, tires — Mr. Zhang’s suicide read like the latest twist in a morality play. Each week, it seemed, brought news of another faulty Chinese product; and with it, growing concerns about unscrupulous Chinese businessmen: cutting corners; pouring cheap, sometimes lethal, ingredients into their products; endangering consumers around the world, even children, to make a bigger profit.
But at the Lee Der factory in Foshan, an industrial city 140 miles northwest of Hong Kong, Mr. Zhang’s colleagues and workers tell a less familiar narrative. They say that Mr. Zhang was a victim, too — of his own duplicitous suppliers, of China’s faulty supply chains, and of the pressures of its loosely regulated brand of capitalism, where Chinese entrepreneurs feel squeezed between Western companies’ appetite for cheap goods and the fierce local competition to satisfy it.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Thursday, August 23 | 4 comments | Permalink
Op-Ed: American Businesses Should Take Responsibility
The China syndrome [New York Daily News]
Ironic news item of the week, courtesy of the Web site cattlenetwork.com: “China has suspended imports from eight U.S. hog-processing plants after discovering traces of the leanness-enhancing feed additive ractopamine in Beijing-bound pork.”
This from a nation that thinks lead is an appropriate additive for toys? And baby bibs? And toothpaste? It’s lovely that China is concerned about America’s skinnier pigs, but concern for consumers here and around the world would be more appreciated. It has gotten to the point that “Made in China” is enough to give shoppers the shivers. Especially since it’s hard these days to find anything not made in China. Or, in the case of food, to know where the item originated.
Last week, Mattel recalled millions of China-made toys tainted with lead paint or containing tiny magnets that kids could swallow. Also recalled by Wal-Mart and other retailers: China-made vinyl bibs with high lead levels. This after the toothpaste scare and the pet food scare and the defective-tire scare. Then you’ve got seafood from China, spawned in water so polluted it’s surprising fish survive long enough to be harvested. Sometimes they don’t.
Let American businesses be forewarned: If they won’t institute stricter regulations and inspections, they face trouble. Already, for example, Gov. Spitzer is leaning on stubborn retailers to take bad products off their shelves. Doing business with China is sort of like dealing with the Gambino crime family. Which is why companies that took advantage of cheap Chinese labor may soon find their profits sleeping with the fishes.
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Thursday, August 23 | 0 comments | Permalink
Amidst Toy Recalls, Plastic Bottles Worry Parents
For Parents, Bottle Safety Still Unclear [Washington Post]
The hot topic of conversation among the mothers at Melissa Bazarian’s play group in Arlington this weekend wasn’t baby strollers, diapers or first words but baby bottles: clear or cloudy?
Clear bottles are likely to include bisphenol A and have for decades. Periodically, however, environmental and consumer groups have questioned the chemical’s safety. Those questions are arising again, even though the Food and Drug Administration says not to worry and the plastic industry stresses the chemical’s many years of use.
But in a year when Thomas and Friends trains and toy cars have turned on them because of lead-paint concerns, parents are sensitive to everything their little ones touch.
Although no conclusive scientific evidence exists that bisphenol A, a chemical widely used in plastics, is harmful to children, last month a panel of the National Institutes of Health said exposure to the chemical raises “some concerns” for children. At the same time, authors of “Baby Bargains” parenting books have recommended switching to bisphenol-free bottles, identified by their opaqueness.
Such talk has prompted Maryland Delegate James W. Hubbard (D-Prince George’s) to plan to revive in the state legislature a bill that would ban the sale of products meant for children under 6 that contain the chemical, including baby bottles. “This is the third year, and the third year is the charm,” he said.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Thursday, August 23 | 4 comments | Permalink
“Illegal Practices” in China Toy Factories
Wal-Mart sources more than 70% of its products - including toys - from China. China Labor Watch charges that toy manufacturers lower toy prices by skimping on product quality and safety, as well as mistreating employees. The pressure to lower prices - even at the cost of human rights and consumer safety - comes largely from retailers like Wal-Mart.
U.S. Group Accuses Chinese Toy Factories of Labor Abuses [New York Times]
A workers’ rights group in the United States released a report on Tuesday detailing what it called brutal conditions and illegal practices in Chinese toy factories, many of which supply some of the world’s biggest brand-name toy makers, including Walt Disney and Hasbro.
China Labor Watch, which is based in New York, said that it had investigated eight Chinese factories over the last year and discovered widespread labor violations, including the hiring of under-age workers, mandatory overtime, unsafe working conditions and managers who engaged in verbal abuse and sexual harassment.
In one instance, the group said, a toy factory in the impoverished Guangxi Province hired 1,000 junior high school students. Chinese law forbids employers to hire children under the age of 16.
“Shortsighted policies drive corporations like Hasbro to turn a blind eye to safety — and to ignore the labor conditions in their supplier factories,” the group said in its report.
The report is being issued at a time of growing concern about the quality and safety of Chinese exports, and after a series of large toy recalls involving Chinese-made goods.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Thursday, August 23 | 0 comments | Permalink
China Labor Watch: Lower Prices Mean Unsafe Products, Labor Violations
A new report from China Labor Watch examines the high cost of price cuts: when toy companies demand lower production costs, the quality of factory working conditions plummets along with the quality of the products those factories produce. Who’s forcing toy companies to lower their prices? Wal-Mart. Click here to read the full report from China Labor Watch.
Price Cuts Worsen China’s Toy Quality, Group Reports [Bloomberg News]
Walt Disney Co. and Sanrio Co. are among companies whose demands for lower prices from Chinese toy suppliers contribute to low product quality, according to New York-based advocacy group China Labor Watch.
The working conditions of Chinese workers in southern China’s Guangdong province, where many toy exporters operate, “remain devastatingly brutal, with long hours, unsafe workplaces and restricted freedom of association, and in blatant violation of Chinese and international labor law,’’ according to the report, citing its survey of eight Guangdong toy factories.
Chinese manufacturers, who make 70 percent of the world’s toys, are coming under increasing scrutiny after Mattel Inc. recalled China-made toys twice this month for using lead-based paint. Some factories cut corners, ignored labor conditions to cap costs and meet the demands of overseas clients with “single- minded pursuit of ever lower prices,’’ China Labor Watch said.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Wednesday, August 22 | 1 comments | Permalink
Wal-Mart Toys with Your Children’s Health
Want to know the price of “every day low prices?” Just take a look at the empty toy shelves at your local Wal-Mart.
Over the past two weeks, Mattel has recalled over 10 million Barbie, Polly Pocket, Dora the Explorer and Sesame Street toys for hazardous lead paint and dangerous magnets. Thousands of concerned parents are rushing to pediatricians’ offices to have their children tested for lead poisoning.
Mattel has taken responsibility for the safety of its products, but Wal-Mart has to be held accountable as well. As it stands, you can’t trust that the toys Wal-Mart is selling you are safe. As the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart sets the standard for product safety—and by bullying companies like Mattel to produce toys and other products at bottom dollar costs, it’s pushing American companies into shady overseas operations.
Tell Wal-Mart to care about its customers’ health, and demand a higher quality for its products:
http://action.walmartwatch.com/madeinchina
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, August 21 | 0 comments | Permalink
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