McDonald's to Probe Child Labor Charges

H O N G   K O N G, August 28 -- Amid accusations that McDonald’s toys are madein a mainland Chinese plant that illegally employs children, theHong Kong office of the fast food chain said today it willinvestigate.

In a brief statement, McDonald’s said it “will not tolerate anysubstandard working conditions” and will send a monitoring team toCity Toys Ltd., the plant across the border in Shenzhen, China,that allegedly is hiring underage laborers.

In a separate statement, the independent auditing firm SocieteGenerale de Surveillance said it is working with McDonald’s and itssupplier, Simon Marketing Ltd., “to determine the facts” and willtake “any necessary corrective actions.”

The auditors said they last evaluated City Toys in October tocheck for compliance with Chicago-based McDonald’s code of conductfor suppliers and “there was no evidence found to suggest that theconditions of the current allegations existed.”

A Threat from the Big Mac

McDonald’s said that if any suppliers are found in breach of itsrequirements for fair labor standards, “they can lose ourbusiness.”

The South China Morning Post reported Sunday that children asyoung as 14 are working 16-hour days for the equivalent of about$2.95 a day — barely the cost of one McDonald’s meal in Hong Kong.

The newspaper said it sent a journalist into the plant tointerview some of the young workers and found that they sleep 16 toa room, on wooden beds with no mattresses.

Some of the teen-agers were quoted as saying they lied abouttheir age and used false identification documents to get the jobspackaging Snoopy, Winnie the Pooh and Hello Kitty toys.