LOS ANGELES (AP) - The Walt Disney Co. said Wednesday it would donate $100,000 to the Red Cross to help earthquake victims in Haiti.
Chief Executive Robert Iger said in a statement, "We hope this donation will help the Red Cross to provide immediate aid and relief to the thousands of people affected by this terrible tragedy."
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.aspx?feed=AP&date=20100113&id=10986391ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS? Wow that's generous of them!!!!!!!!!!
Working for the Rat
Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it s off to work we go.' It's difficult to imagine that the men and women sewing Disney-branded clothing in Haiti would be singing along to the familiar tune of Walt Disney's 'Seven Dwarfs'.
Take Remi for example. This shy young ~ man works for the Gilanex company, one ° of four Haitian plants subcontracted by the giant US-based entertainment empire. He spends his days operating a sewing machine making 101 Dalmatian T-shirts and other garments loved by children worldwide.
He is paid according to a piece rate system which means the more garments he finishes the more he earns. If he meets the quota set by management he can reach the top rate (around 42 cents an hour). But even the best sewers only reach quota two or three times a week.
When Remi was interviewed by US journalist Mary Ann Sabo he told her he had been working as a machine operator for five years but still earns just 30 cents an hour. That's the official minimum wage in Haiti and works out to $2.40 a day or $624 a year.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Global_Secrets_Lies/WorkingForRAt_DisneyHaiti.htmlDisney's Hell in Haiti
The dewy eyes and beguiling smile of Walt Disney's newest animated star, Pocahontas, may have charmed children the world over this Christmas. But in Haiti, Pocahontas symbolizes a living hell for many of the young women toiling in the country's assembly zones, according to a new report released last month.
Workers stitching clothing emblazoned with feel-good Disney characters are not even paid enough to feed themselves, let alone their families, charges the New York-based National Labor Committee Education Fund in Support of Worker and Human Rights in Central America (NLC). “Haitian contractors producing Mickey Mouse and Pocahontas pajamas for U.S. companies under license with the Walt Disney Corporation are in some cases paying workers as little as 15 gourdes (US$1) per day -- 12 cents an hour -- in clear violation of Haitian law,” said the NLC. Along with starvation wages, Haitian workers making clothes for U.S. corporate giants face sexual harassment and exceedingly long hours of work. “Haiti does need economic development and Haitian workers do need jobs, but not at the price of violating workers' fundamental rights. Paying 11 cents an hour to sew dresses for Kmart is not development. It is crime,” charged the NLC.
Over the past two decades, U.S. State Department officials have consistently prescribed development of the “transformation industry” as the antidote to Haitian poverty. In the early 1980s, about 250 factories employed over 60,000 Haitian workers in Port- au-Prince. The minimum wage then was US$2.64 a day. But many sweat-shops fled Haiti after the fall of the dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986. Others left shortly after the election of Jean- Bertrand Aristide in 1990, who campaigned with nationalist rhetoric, and still more left after the 1991 coup d'etat.
But Haiti's miserable condition today makes it an ideal “competitor” in the world labor market, say U.S. State Department officials, and the assembly zones are again at the heart of the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) for Haiti now being peddled by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Still, the recovery of the assembly zones remains weak. Only 72 assembly firms employing some 13,000 people had been re- established by September 1995, according to a Haitian government agency. International financial institutions argue that Haiti must lower the other costs of assembly production like port, telephone and electricity fees. Hence, the World Bank is pushing for U.S. companies to take control of these key sectors through the privatization of Haiti's publicly owned industries. Meanwhile, SAP strategists argue, wages must be kept low and “competitive.”
But the National Labor Committee (NLC), and Haitian workers, contend that the assembly zones in Haiti, like those in the rest of the Caribbean and Central America, are zones for slavery. “As Haitian factory owners and American corporations are profiting from the low wages, Haitian workers are struggling every day just to feed themselves and their families,” noted the NLC report, entitled, “How to Get Rich on 11 Cents an Hour.”
continued>>>
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/294.htmlFor decades people around the world have associated "Disney" with innocence, imagination, and purity. However, behind the scenes of this gigantic company there are human rights violations being committed daily around the world. In factories workers are being paid staggeringly low wages. These factories not only pay their employees minute amounts, but they provide dirt-poor conditions as well. This issue is a problem not only for the third world nations, but for Americans also.
The small Caribbean island of Haiti is the most glaring example of an inhumane Disney sweatshop. Workers there stitch Aladdin t-shirts for 28 cents an hour (Haiti). Surprisingly, this is by far highest wage of the three sweatshops cited in this report. However, food can actually be as expensive in Haiti as it is in the United States. After taxes, a Haitian sweatshop worker will have 15-20 dollars a month. Everything is put into perspective when it's noted that it costs 20 dollars a month to rent a one-room shack with no running water. Simply put, a single individual would find it difficult to survive on these means, let alone someone with children.
Most of the world's slave labor in the past ten years has taken place in Asia. In Vietnam, the Walt Disney Company runs a sweatshop that produces those plastic toys that accompany many fast food meals. Employees of this factory work seven days a week, for ten hours a day. That is almost double the average American's work week. However, these people make only 17 cents an hour. Three years ago, 200 women of this factory has to be hospitalized due to being exposed to acetone, a toxic substance. The factory refused to make any changes in the ventilation system or health code.
It isn't difficult to understand the injustices taking place here. The solution isn't necessarily full blown Socialism. However, when a Disney sweatshop worker in Burma is paid six cents a day for tedious labor, that figure stands in stark contract to Disney CEO Michael Eisner's income of about 102,000 thousand dollars an hour. Sadly, the demand for jobs at such a low wage only reiterates that whole nations are extremely needy. The issue becomes whether or not it is morally wrong to pay so little when a company can easily afford more.
Wages are only one of the negative aspects of these Disney sweatshops. Besides the Megatex factory in Haiti, there is no tolerance for worker's rights. When reading quotes from Disney sweatshop employees worldwide, one uniform theme was that any worker suspected of organizing for grievances would be fired immediately. The Code of Conduct that is upheld in every other Disney operation seems to never be enforced in the Asian sweatshops.
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