NY Daily News
December 22, 2000
By Kristi Berner
Special to the NewsThey're some of the biggest names in their respective industries, but they pay some of the puniest wages to laborers in their factories in Asia and South America, a local human rights advocacy group charged yesterday.
The National Labor Committee, a group that fights sweatshop abuse in foreign nations, yesterday singled out five retailers - Nike, The Sharper Image, Wal-Mart, Kohl's and Farberware - and one federal agency, the Army and Air Force Exchange Services, for its Golden Grinch Awards.
The committee blasted this year's "winners" for paying starvation wages to factory workers, many of whom are forced to put in 16-hour workdays.
"These retailers have lost their moral compass," said Charles Kernaghan, the committee's director, at a press conference in Manhattan. "They are absolutely driven by the bottom line."
Nike spokesman Vada Manager said the sneaker giant has a 50-person team that monitors wages and labor law compliance at its foreign factories, adding: "He's [Kernaghan] got the right issue, but the wrong company."
Sharper Image spokeswoman Kathryn Grant said a company executive recently inspected the factory in China that makes Razor scooters for Sharper Image and deemed it to be "in compliance with labor laws".
At the press conference Kernaghan introduced Qiang Li, a 28-year-old Chinese immigrant who said through an interpreter that he worked from 7:30 a.m. to midnight for 15 cents an hour making Farberware can openers at a factory in Xin Qiao province, China.
But Farberware spokeswoman Jeff Siegel told the Daily News, the Long-Island-based company has never operated a can opener factory in Xin Qiao and said: "I think this guy [Kernaghan] is phony."
The committee said sweatshop conditions existed at a bicycle factory operated by Wal-Mart in China. A Wal-Mart spokeswoman said it was the first time she'd heard a complaint about that facility.
The Army and Air Force Exchange Services, which has materials made at factories in Thailand and Nicaragua that the committee says are sweatshops, could not be immediately reached for comment.