Recommended reading
Easy to manage: a report on Chinese toy workers and the responsibility of the companies
Can Nordic companies do more to ensure suppliers adhere to codes of conduct?
Authors:
K. Bjurling
Publisher:
Fair Trade Center, 2005
This paper investigates violations of workers rights in the export industry of China. It particularly focuses on the manner in which Nordic toy companies are linked to these violations and it develops possible reasons of why the companies' ethical demands have not led to more improvements.
Based on a research project on the largest toy selling companies in Sweden the report argues that:
- companies which were exained violate indirectly, through their suppliers, Chinese legislation, international conventions and their own codes of conduct within the toy manufacturing in southern China
- for the last few years, however, the companies have started to put demands on their suppliers and have in many cases also developed a method to try and tackle insufficient working conditions
- yet, in many cases workers, in particular guest workers, continue to be completely unaware of their rights
- the single most common violation against the legislation and the codes of conduct relates to working hours
- seven out of nine supplier companies are declared to be cheating when the buyers verify that their ethical rules, the so-called codes of conduct, are followed.
The study argues that two factors need to be thoroughly considered in order to improve work conditions in the factories. The first on is the reluctance of purchasing companies to pay for the compliance of the demands in the codes of conduct. The second one is the lack of a real co-decision power of for workers which could enable them to exert meaningful influence.
