“Dongguan Qing Xi Juantiway Plastic Factory” isn’t a household name, but you’d probably recognize the products it made for the world’s largest entertainment company: the factory was one of thousands making official products featuring Disney characters. The company put another supplier on notice as well for its own labor violations.
Disney doesn’t hire the factories, but licenses its products to suppliers, which in turn contract with the factories. Still, products with its characters on them are an important part of Disney’s image, and customers don’t want to hear that their Moana or Elsa or Snow White toys were made by workers who are underage, suffering, or both.
Bloomberg reports that Disney has its own standards for the tens of thousands of factories making its products, called the Disney International Labor Standards Program, and the nonprofit China Labor Watch flagged these two factories as making Disney products and problematic.
In a memorandum made public yesterday, Disney noted that Dongguan Qing Xi Juantiway Plastic Factory “failed to remediate hiring and human resource issues identified during an investigation of the facility last year, despite our encouragement of remediation and their contractual requirements to us.” Disney did not specify what those issues were.
Aother company, Lam Sun Toy Limited Co., received a warning about its failure at “accurate record keeping, health, fire safety, and human resources practices.” It has the choice to shape up or lose its right to manufacture Disney products.
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist