McDonald's toys packaged by child laborers?

HONG KONG - Snoopy, Winnie the Pooh and Hello Kitty toys sold with McDonald's meals in Hong Kong are made at a mainland Chinese sweatshop that illegally employs child laborers to package the toys, a newspaper reported yesterday.

The children, some only 14 years old, work 16-hour days for about $3 - barely the cost of one McDonald's meal in Hong Kong, the Sunday Morning Post reported.

The newspaper said one of its reporters mingled with some of the youngsters in a guarded factory complex in Shenzhen, just across the border from Hong Kong, where they live in spartan conditions. It said 16 workers sleep in a single room on wooden beds with no mattresses.

Some of the youngsters told the newspaper they lied about their age and used false identification documents to obtain jobs with a company called City Toys, which works under contract for a McDonald's supplier, Simon Marketing.

McDonald's said it has a strict code on labor rights prohibiting child labor and that earlier independent audits had found City Toys to be in compliance with corporate guidelines.

"We take the current allegations very seriously and are taking immediate action to get all the facts," a McDonald's spokesman said.

The newspaper quoted a City Toys director, Hong Kong businessman Jack Lau Kim-hung, as saying he "knew nothing about the underage workers" but would investigate. It also quoted a spokeswoman at Simon Marketing, Vivian Foo, as denying that the plant employed child laborers.

The newspaper quoted one worker it identified as An Luping, 14, as saying she lied about her age so she could work at the plant. "My family is poor," An was quoted as saying. "It can't afford to keep four children."