McDonald’s Packaging Uses Sweatshop Labor

Toys sold with McDonald’s children’s meals in Hong-Kong are packaged at a Chinese plant that uses child labor, the Associated Press reported. Adolescents as young as 14 years old, illegally employed at City Toys Ltd., work 16-hour days for just three dollars„a sum that could not buy one meal at a Hong Kong McDonald’s restaurant. At City Toys’ Shenzhen factory complex, 16 workers sleep in a single room on wooden beds with no mattresses. City Toys is a subsidiary of the Hong-Kong-based Pleasure Tech Holdings Ltd., a McDonald’s supplier. McDonald’s representatives say the company has a strict labor rights code, and has independent auditing firms conducting periodic, unannounced inspections on its suppliers’ facilities. The restaurant chain says it will discontinue association with any factory that does not comply with its regulations.