1000 children aged 8-13 years old working in brick kilns in Shanxi

Our China team just sent over this terrible story from the Chinese papers. Be warned its not for the faint hearted…

Following the news stories on the Olympics firm accused of using child labor, the Chinese papers have reported  that at least 1000 trafficked children  were found working in brick-making factories in Shanxi. The youngest children were only 8 years old,  the oldest only 13.  The children were locked up after working all day until 10 at night. They did not have water for showers, many had skin diseases.  Many were reported to have been severely beaten by the supervisors, some to the point where they had limbs broken, others had been beaten up with hot pods for churning bricks until their backs were burnt deeply. 

 

About 400 parents have signed a petition letter on the internet desperate to seek help. The local media have reported that some parents rescued 40 children, but found that some local police deterred parents from rescuing other children, warning them ‘not to interfere with children of others’ while leaving the children working in the factories.  Local police have been accused of being involved in trafficking the children among different brick factories in the region.  Other local police were accused of putting money for financing the rescue action into their own pockets. 

This sheds light on how deep corruption in the Shanxi area goes.  

Chinese Workers Paid With Fake Cash

There was a burst of incredulous laughter from one side of the Impactt office this afternoon, as this news piece dropped into our inboxes, signalling a new low for labour standards in China. 

The article, posted on ChinaCSR.com, reports that 20 workers at an unnamed jeans-dyeing factory in Guangdong were paid in fake bank notes. When the workers asked the factory to exchange the fake notes for real ones, they were dismissed. 

The factory reportedly claimed that they were victims of the forgery as well, and that they would pay the workers in real currency when they had resolved the issue with their bank. But this does not explain the dismissal of the workers, and goes against the additonal reports that the factory ‘usually uses the fake notes only for new workers’.  

The story is in fact not remotely funny.

We have spent the past 30 minutes discussing what we should say on this matter, and how we as a company should react to the news. What we all agree on is that this is a form of forgery that goes well beyond the common practice of faking books to show that workers have been paid the correct amount of real currency.