Stop Toying Around!

© fair spielt

Toys we buy in Europe are mostly produced in China. Outsourcing production to low cost countries allows big companies to have extremely low wages and production costs. In order to meet the very short delivery periods and accept the low prices for toy orders from multinational companies, violations of human and workers’ rights are deemed “normal” in many Chinese toy factories.

• Labour hours are far too long (up to 16 hours every day!) and wages paid are too low to enable workers and their families to lead a life in dignity.
• Work places are dangerous because machines are old and faulty, toxic substances are used and safety gear is hardly ever distributed.

© Swedwatch

Approximately 3-5 million people, most of them young women, work and live under very often inhumane conditions in Chinese toy factories. They leave their homes and families in the countryside in order to find work and earn money in the big cities, where thousands of factories produce for Western toy multinationals. But salaries are too low to support their relatives and excessive working hours and dangerous work places make many of them sick. There is even a Chinese word for death from exhaustion: Guolaosi. Most of the workers are not aware of their rights and very often neither factory management nor ordering customers are willing to rectify this. And in China, only factory representation is allowed, and apart from the official party union, unions are forbidden.

The Campaign „Stop toying around!“ wants to help change this situation! Our task is to inform consumers, media and decision makers about the situation of Chinese workers in toy factories. It is our goal to start a dialogue between multinational toy companies, wholesalers, NGOs, and factory workers and their representatives to eventually improve the situation of Chinese toy workers and allow them a humane life which is not endangered and threatened every day.