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McDonalds & Sweatshops
Todays topic is about my beloved McDonalds. After reading this article some of you will surely think "Well, at least they provide jobs. What would the people do there without McDonalds?". Sure, this might be partly correct, but I look at it a bit differently. I think we are using this as an argument to comfort ourself and as an excuse, so we can still buy their junk food with a "clean" conscience.
I say "As long as McDonalds makes billions of $$$ profit and the managers stay in their huge beach houses with 2 Mercedeses & a Ferrari & don´t know where to put all their ca$h, the corps are simply exploiting those peoples´ situation - living in poverty. In my opinion it's a simple matter of greed. By just spending a few hundred of their billion $$ in each one of their factories, they could improve the conditions for the workers already. McDonalds has enough ca$h! But instead of paying their workers enough, so they can afford their basic needs, the managers ca$h in to extend their Rolls-Royce oldtimer collection. Of course same goes for many other corps that support child labour or/and sweatshops.
Those circumstances piss me off and that's enough reason for me to boycott them. In addition the McDonalds corp. financially supports, just like many other corps. i.e. Johnson & Johnson or Nestle, Isreal in their occupation of Palestinian territory.
Furthermore McDonalds is responsible for deforrestation in South America (i.e. Brazil & Argentinia) so they can have their hyper farms.
It has been calculated that for every pound of beef, 55 acres of rainforrest need to be destroyed.
Simply incredible.
For more infos about McDonalds and their dirty business practices, go to McSpotlight.
That's it for now.
~peace~
| USA: McDonald's Uses Sweatshop Associated Press August 27, 2000 |
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 Sunday. The children, as young as 14, 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. The newspaper quoted some of the youngsters as saying they lied about their age and used false identification documents to obtain jobs with a company called City Toys Ltd., a subsidiary of Hong Hong-based Pleasure Tech Holdings Ltd. that works under contract for a McDonald's supplier, Simon Marketing (Hong Kong) Ltd. McDonald's said it has a strict code on labor rights that prohibits child labor and that for more than a year an independent auditing firm has carried out periodic, unannounced inspections of its suppliers. In October, auditing firm Societe Generale de Surveillance, or SGS, inspected City Toys and found it to be in compliance with corporate guidelines, McDonald's and SGS said in statements released Sunday. "We take the current allegations very seriously and are taking immediate action to get all the facts," said a statement from McDonald's corporate spokesman Walt Riker. The statement said that if any McDonald's suppliers do not comply with its code of conduct, they could lose the company's business. 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 14-year-old An Luping 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." "Many people do this," the girl was quoted as saying. "I used a fake name - Yang Li. She is my friend living in my village who is 17 years old." Meanwhile, about 20 activists who accuse McDonald's of child exploitation demonstrated outside one of its outlets at a busy tourist spot in the territory Sunday. "Stop exploitation, shame on McDonald's," the activists chanted. Several McDonald's customers outside the branch said child labor was bad, but it would not stop them from eating at the fast-food chain. Source: Corpwatch.Org |
