It can be difficult not to buy Chinese sweat shop made products, but it can be cut at least 80%. I live in an area with very few stores and if I can do it, those in cities certainly can. NO ONE has to shop at Wal-mart. Most items can be bought second hand.
And dinelson7 I think you are barking up the wrong tree. That clerk has no control over anything. They are probably getting minimum wage and just trying to pay the rent...it is way higher up where the dirty work is done. As if it is not bad enough being a clerk in one of these places, do you need to be blamed for the hell you are working in, too?? Have a heart.
All the chickens of Bush's Adm are coming home to roost. The MSM never cared about the Chinese worker's hell, nor the jobs taken from Mexico..until an American child or pet is effected. It's going to get bigger, but we can all look for that now non-existent Union label, boycott Chinese made products, and vote for a candidate that will scrap NAFTA/WTO..Dennis Kucinich!

Most of you guys don't have kids, do you? (I'm sure there are some...) And most of you don't live on one quasi-professional income and one parent stay home because its just too scary to trust your kids to "affordable" daycare.

Let me tell you it is hard to be working class. We sacrifice, we don't shop at Wal-mart, we try to buy local in all things, we try to eat healthy and grow some of our food. But kids go to school and watch a little tv, and they know when other kids get something. Try to say no to your 6 year old boy you love so much, who is into Star Wars (and c'mon Star Wars is cool) that he shouldn't have one of the galactic heroes sold by Hasbro. But I'll have to.

It drives me crazy that its worth it for these companies to make toys out of plastic (derived from oil) in China, ship them in huge container tankers (using up more oil than you can drive in a year) and slip them into a Happy Meal for free.

I am trying to change my ways and my kids - it is coming from so many different directions; global warming, Chinese imports, slave labor, Wal-martism, foreign oil dependency, healthy eating, and on and on. A regular parent with 3 kids almost can't keep up with it all AND try to call for impeachment and an end to war and promote social justice....and we also like to have a little fun too!

The problems have exploded exponentially in just the last 10 years or so. That's as old as my eldest. I could keep up with the mess before somewhat - now it is my responsibility to do even more!!!

AND keep the house clean, the pets fed and walked, the laundry clean, the dishes washed, pay the bills, the garden weeded and watered, call my sick mom, visit my elderly neighbors, etc.etc.....

We folks could use a little help here!!!! That was the idea behind representative government, right???? AND I write them and call them too...

Nothing changes except getting worse.
Oh yeah - our local grocers got bought out by Kroger...
and our local schools can't put AC in because the work was stopped by a petition of people who don't have kids in school anymore and didn't want to pay for it. But our kids have to make the tests or the schools will fail so school starts in the middle of summer and they come home hot and sick to their stomachs.

But I'll stop buying toys made in China....
even though we really can't afford the nice ones made elsewhere.....

Anybody got some US toys for hot and tired kids???

I thought not.

Peace -
a cynical and burned out parent-citizen-activist-worker

STOP CARELESS CONSUMPTION

(you don't need that shit)

Christmas is coming!

would you dare not give your children TOYS?

of course not. X mas as usual.

Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton, and the beat goes on. It's time for change

judi: that's the spirit. But that very thing might get you labeled as a terrorist. Really. After all the GWOT is all about feeding the beast.

Nevertheless I truly believe the day has already arrived: everything is going to get smaller. Those global corporations are going belly up as I type. Due to their size and resources, the process will take about 3-7 years to fully play out. We will witness even worse in the meantime as they desperately try to survive with the government's help, of course.

My kids LOVES those cars from the movie Cars, but he's in love with his own imagination even more. The cardboard box and his vivid, TV-less imagination has taken his development to places we didn't dare dream of as kids. It's wonderful to watch. And we requested long ago that our relatives NOT buy him anything made in China and/or of plastic. After all, how could our son enjoy things made by other kids in brutal conditions? We abhor the thought of it.

The only way to beat this deplorable situation regarding faulty or dangerous toys and other products is for Americans to make the toys themselves. Where is our ingenuity? In competing with China and other third worlds, maybe we should just go back to the drawing board and start making our own clothes, toys, pet food, organic foods, and even cars. Can''t depend on the legislatures to fix NAFTA and its corresponding corruption. So let's see the good old American intelligence initiating more homegrown products with legal citizens employed.

think King said it best in hisA Time to Break The Silence speech:
." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin…we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

"
We do really need a revolution of values in this day and age of decadence. The lack of compassion for the suffering of others is immense. We can never overcome all the challenges of the future unless we take a good hard look at ourselves. We must take responsibility for our part in all of this. No man or woman is an island. We all have an effect on the welfare of others.We must be whole as individuals first before we can be whole cities or whole nations. No matter how you slice it it starts with each and every one of US.

I appreciate the author for bringing to light some of the facts about the plight of the hard working people that "produce profit" to the transnational companies.

It is also good to know about the transnational companies of the US and the West. It is known that the reason for the investment of the transnational corporations of the US and the West in some of the countries is rich natural resources, and high profit for low investment due to cheap labour, and the nearly complete absence of worker benefits, taxes, environmental regulations, and worker safety costs. For example, in Haiti workers are paid 11 cents an hour (in US minimum wage is $5.15 per hour) by the transnational corporations such as Disney, J.C. Penny, and Wal-Mart.

Bridgestone and the child labour

In the rubber plantation in Liberia owned by Bridgestone Firestone North American Tire Company since 1926, children work 12 to 14 hours a day. A UN Report "Human Rights in Liberia's Rubber Plantations: Tapping into Future" notes: "Although management of Firestone…stated that child labour is prohibited within …(its) concession (area), HROs (United Nations Mission in Liberia Human Rights Officers) spoke with a number of children working on …(the) plantation, aged between 10 and 14 years…Reports of child labour on Firestone plantation have also been documented in a report ("Firestone: The Mark of Slavery") by the NGO, Save My Future Foundation, in March 2005." In this plantation the workers are given unreasonably high production quota, which takes a rubber tapper at least 21 hours a day to meet the quota. This forces the workers to bring their wives and children to work in order to meet the quota, or else their already low wages will be halved. It is observed that the workers live in shacks, most of which have not been renovated since the 1920s, while managers live in luxurious mansions with all the modern amenities, including golf courses, and receive huge salary. It is also noted that the company dumps toxic waste directly into the Farmington River which is used by the local community for fishing and bathing.

The United States is one of the two countries refused to sign the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), 1989, an international convention for the abolition of child labour. US has ratified only 14 of the 184 International Labour Organisation (ILO) Conventions and 2 of the 8 Conventions the ILO has identified as fundamental to the rights of human beings at work. Only by ratifying Conventions a country is subject to regular scrutiny of the ILO. www.fpif.org/outside/commentary/2002/021 Oilo.html

Slavery in the US Approved by the US Congress

"Now visit the beautiful tropical islands described by disgraced House Majority Leader Tom Delay as "a perfect petri dish of capitalism." What's so perfect about Saipan and the other 13 Northern Mariana Islands? Primarily this: items produced there can carry the label "Made in USA" and be sold in the U.S. without tariffs or quotas, but the scandalously low U.S. minimum wage does not apply, and the pathetically minimal rights of immigrants and workers in the U.S. do not apply. There are no labor unions. Any worker can be terminated and deported at any time for no cause.

"The workers, mostly Chinese women, sew clothing for J. Jill, Elie Tahari, Ann Taylor, Liz Claiborne, The Gap, and Ralph Lauren, among others. The workers pay so much money to obtain work and for shelter and food that they can labor for a decade and still not pay it back. They serve, therefore, as indentured servants, sharing rooms and beds, lacking health care, and working extra unpaid hours for the reward of being permitted to also work paid overtime. Pregnancy is unacceptable, costs of it not covered, and amateur abortion encouraged.

"The island of Saipan does great business in prostitution for businessmen and American soldiers. Approximately 90 percent of the prostitutes are former Chinese garment workers. Others had been recruited for jobs like waitressing but were forced into prostitution instead.
"Over the past decade, 29 bills in Congress have sought to apply a minimum wage standard and/or immigration law to the Mariana Islands or to deny use of "Made in USA" to items produced there. Every one of these bills has failed. Some have won support in the Senate but been blocked by the House Resources Committee. Others have won the support of a majority of House Members but still been killed in that same committee."

Well, this is the high price of low prices. I really don't know why anyone's surprised. If you want cheap toys, or any manufactured object, you're going to get a number of things: (1) poor environmental policy (2) poor work conditions (3) labor violations etc, etc...this is what you get.

This is a fine example of how great free trade works. NAFTA,CAFTA,GATT are all the enemies. They have turned China and Mexico into the largest plantation in the history of the world. We buy all this garbage from multinational corps. which is produced by the blood sweat and tears of modern day slaves. It should make anyone with an ounce of a conscience utterly appaled. No matter how much it hurts Us we have to start on a massive scale boycotting these companies who allow this type of treatment of the laborers making their products. Who else will make anything change.The Corps will always pass the buck and say we didn't know this went on, and the communist regimes that run these countries have no motive to change the treatment of their people. In a capitalist system you have to hit where it hurts and that is at the profit margin. If we don't buy it, they can't sell it and they get the only message they understand.

blessthebeasts-One thing that's odd about this is that it seems that most of the people that buy these toys anymore are collectors who never even take them out of the package. They don't all come cheap. Being a comics fan, I am aware of the collector's market. Many of these figures are high-end, meaning they have detailed "sculpts" (as they call them) often made in the styles of popular comics artists, and "multiple points of articulation". They don't come cheap. And again, they're being made for nerdy adult collectors who just put them on shelves or hang onto them for a while, waiting to sell them on ebay.

I used to play with action figures also when I was a kid. Then one day, I noticed that my Captain America doll had MADE IN TAIWAN engraved on his back. I asked my dad about it, and then I discovered why he didn't like me getting such things for Xmas.

Have your kids make stick figures out of pipe cleaners. They come on all different colors, and they can be any character you can think of. Of course, I don't know how and where pipe cleaners are made. So that might not be a good alternative either.

Is it possible for goods to be made without sacrificing the well-being of the people making them? Should we even be manufacturing plastic and rubber? Are there alternatives?

Would it hurt the profit margins of these companies that much to pay their workers a decent wage, ensure their safety, and to make those products here?

A few years ago, I remember reading about a company named IIRC Easy Balance. They made tennis shoes, here in the U.S., and their workers made an average of $15/hr. If they can do it, why can't Nike? Or Mattel?

The greatest threat to American workers is the American workforce- housewife and their male counteparts, american work force husbands.
American workers have been cutting each others throats for so long they know of no other way.
For over 60 years I have heard employers from the north say if you don't do the job fast and as cheap those lower wages of rednceks and b lakcs will do it and they didit no matter how hard the northern worker tried and now those southern workers who were threatend by theri bosses with replacements if they di not work harder and faster to be replaced by Latinos and they are being replaced.
A myth of American independence fed to a large ignorant popualce who in turn fed it to their children who now are feeling the effects of that ignroance and blame the Chinese, Japanese,Koreans, Latinos and Arabs for their lot in life.
Ignorance is bliss for the ignorant never have to look inward.

The sooner workers' rights gain respect in China and elsewhere, the sooner the corporations and their lackeys in government will have to stop trampling on the rights of workers here. It'll be a long, hard struggle -- bloody at times.

boycott Chinese products or shut up!!

How pathetic is it that these companies like Mattel, Hasbro, Disney, etc. that market exclusively to children, get their products from slave labor and at the same time are poisoning these kids, who are the source of their wealth?!? If this doesn't make middle-class America wake up, we are certainly doomed.

Excuse me but how many of you have been on the floor of American factories or processing plants lately?
Try visiting a chicken meat or fish processing facility.
Try working as a field hand, landscaper, laying cable of the many firms who supply your puter imputs, or unloading semis one after the other for 12 hours straight, to see where manual labor has it so good.
Whenever you hear some politco saying what the US needs is more manufacturing the examples you find in China, Indonesia and Mexico is what he is talking about and most assuredly he has never worked in any of them.
When Nike set up its plants and working conditions they set the stage for all future mass production environments.
They have it down to knowing within 1/10th of a minute what each and every employee is supposed to be doing; they have actually measured down lower than that but in every operation you allow a plus or minus for seemingly random events.
Every move an employee makes is to conform to a measurement of time for production and supply for production all geared towards maximizing profits.
The human as part of machinery and assembly line.
OSHA and in my immediate environs WISH, Washington Industrial , Safety and Health is purely for state employees and performance is based upon how much they save state in payout of industrial accident funds.(Yes they have their own state industrial and I have found no claim posted by one of state employees denied, with a vast proportion receiving a disability within two years of retirement so that their pension will be higher.
OSHA and State Industrial inspectors do not enter an industrial site unless asked by employer or an employee files a complaint.
Being an at will employer, they do not have to explain why they fire and the employee is not entitled to payments if fired or quits, any employee who files will be found as incompetent once original claim he filed is settled.
They can even fire you even if you were injured at work and cannot return to work until healed.
Maximization of profits is the rule and the fewer employees, 12 hour four different crews per shift is now the norm not an exception.( four days straight one week three the next or some combination total of same.
Harsh conditions are endured in many occupations with threat of discharge the norm, and yes slogans instead of actual safety programs and if safety is mentioned it is mentioned in context of too many accidents means we will have to cut first benefits if you have any and then wages or move plant overseas.
Today we hear the lead complaint towards Chinese toys and they show you plastic unpainted toys, it is the plastic that has lead in it from its processing.
The plastic and chemical industry in US is a killer, from people working to living in close proximity to those plants to the end products.
Just recently the announcement of hard plastics as being dangerous due to leaching has been known for over 60 years, and even your pop bottles need limits by date because of this leaching.
Pill bottles the same.
Do you have PVC windows?
Well the workers are exposed to airborne powders dioxins and you are then exposed to the leaching into your home of those chemicals.
Now look at the hard plastic your child's toy came packaged within.
Sheesh!
You cannot even protect your own workers and selves from poor work and living environments but you want to change the Chinese?
I guess they should be thankful to live in as dangerous to health work site as we are?Americans griper about chickens and e-cli when they buy it but forget the poor damn slobs who handle those chickens hundreds and even thousands of chickens by employees of low wage almost no benefits as they pay for their own insurance programs, and worse of all no sick leave so they have to use vacation or get fired when ill from those work conditions.
Get out from behind those PC's and take a look at who is making your luxury lives so endurable.

Read the "IRON HEEL" by Jack London.

Everything has to have that finished and polished look. Children have imagination but adults will not let them use it. Besides who do you sue if your child is playing with just a stick or a cardboard box. The EU gets safe toys and products that come off the same line. Why has our government not protected us? I thought we were all safer now.

Right on, Annabelle. What about using scrap wood to make all sorts of toys & playthings. I remember making a "gig" with a tomato box, couple of boards & a pair of skates. I also used to put a twig in the gutter after a rain & watch it sail down the street. Children have a great imagination which needs to be cultivated. They don't need "action" figures of plastic that don't even move.

As a child did you ever make a boat out of half a walnut shell, a toothpick and a maple leaf, or any other creative project where you made something from what ever you could scrounge up? Maybe not, but there is something to be said for not piling a mountain of junky toys on children when they could be utilizing what creative energy they might have left after being glued to their computers and tv hours on end. Of course, it would mean that some adult would need to give a small amount of time and effort. Too little time, so much to do.

In every country, the poor are exploited by the rich. China has a larger population which means that more poor are exploited. Based on that, the media attention is drawn there. China doesn't exploit their poor any more than we do. Ideally there would be no "Kings and Peasants" but that is the reality of the world we live in.
The question we need to ask is "How do we fix it?" I think the way to fix it is through ethics. The children of the rich are the ones that need to be taught. (The rich adults are already too far gone to hear your words) If there is a way to teach them that ethical and moral behavior can coexist with wealth (I believe that it can), the world will start to heal.

Every once in awhile a mainstream media report comes out about the horrendous conditions in China and other third-world sweatshops.

And predictibaly the Disney's, Mattel's, Gap's, or whatever corporation responds like Claude Rains did in the movie Casablanca--"I'm shocked, SHOCKED!"

Capitalism is a beast, and the beast feeds on profits.

All the CEO cares about is that at the end of the quarter or fiscal year, he can show a rise in profit.

"If it makes money, you don't make apologies".

Until we get rid of capitalism, there will never EVER be any improvement.

There was a thread similar to this recently, regarding Chinese factories.

Listen carefully everyone. Recently, the Chinese government was going to implement new laws, providing for better working conditions, better wages, etc. for Chinese workers. The multinational and American companies threatened to pull out of China if the government passed such regulations. As a result, the Chinese government was not able to raise standards for workers here.

There are certainly many poor conditions to be found for workers in China, and those poor conditions did not start with the U.S. and multinational corps, however, the Chinese are making progress and improving this situation. Perhaps not as fast or fully as possible or desired, however, that too is a giant task and progress is progress. The complexities of history and culture here, combined with the population and modernization, are so far beyond the easy comprehension of Westerners, it would be a gross understatement to say "you have no idea".

Even Billy Boy Gates himself was apparently one who resisted worker reforms here in China. I guess he hasn't got enough money yet.

On the other hand - U.S. and multinational corporations do NOT want progress and are actively trying to stifle it.

jpbreeze, never said otherwise. It was part of the same process boosted by USAID under Reagan and Clinton. Yes, Capitalism at it's worst has taken hold in China but the companies are still based here.

One solution I'v always favored is that nothing made under conditions or for wages unacceptible in the US should be allowed to be imported or sold here. Rather than the worker's competitive race to the bottom, we could improve working conditions globally.

And as long as we buy their products and look for the cheapest prices we too are guilty. Ilove to go to store managers and ask them about where they came from and what about factory conditions and when they can't tell me, I hand them back. I also unwrap overly packaged products and give them to clerks.

ahhhh.... nothing like seeing and living with the results of pure capitalism!! china is deeply embedded in the economics of the united states.

Jaded Prole

Get it right man. US Multinational Companies first moved to Mexico, then to China.

The reason US industries moved to China (with the assistance of the US government) was to avoid the workplace regulations in the US as well as for the near slave labor. We can't do much to pressure China as they are our main creditor and thus more powerful than the US but we can boycott targeted companies that have their factories there.

Organized labor should be trying to work with Chinese labor. As it has been said: free labor cannot compete with slave labor.

It has been known for a long time that working conditions in these factories is very poor. Although it is never late to take action, it will take a monumental effort to improve anything because so much manufacturing is done there. Unfortunately, consumers cannot easily boycott these companies because there's nowhere else to get the products from at this point since China has become the world's manufacturer.