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November 14, 2007
Making Toys is Not Child's Play
by Anne Moore Odell
A group of shareholders have come together to demand safer working conditions for workers along the
toy supply chain.
SocialFunds.com --
The holidays are approaching and the toy-buying season is starting its annual frenzy. However, the
large number of recalls by toymakers such as Mattel, RC2 and Toys R Us has highlighted consumers'
worries that unsafe toys are making children sick. Yet little has been made of the dangers that the
workers who make the toys face on a daily basis.
"While the health threats to consumers are
important, we suspect there may be potentially far greater risks to supply chain workers who make
the toys," said Conrad MacKerron, Director of the Corporate Social Responsibility Program at the As You Sow Foundation. "The workers are likely
to be subjected to large amounts of volatile and harmful airborne chemicals on a prolonged basis,
many hours a day for weeks or months."
A large number of concerned shareholders have
banded together to focus on the how well companies are monitoring the product safety of toys and
the working conditions along the toy supply chain. Coordinated by the non-profit investor
organization As You Sow, the shareholder effort is confronting publicly held toy companies and
licensors.
The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), a non-profit coalition of 275 faith-based institutional
investors, and the Investor Environmental Health Network (IEHN), which represents over 20 investment organizations with $22
billion in assets under management, are partners with As You Sow in the toy supply chain
shareholder project.
"IEHN's corporate engagements have emphasized consumer exposures to
chemicals, but we've worked on the assumption that if we can reduce use of chemicals downstream in
supply chains, this will benefit occupationally exposed workers upstream," said Richard Liroff,
Executive Director of IEHN. "As You Sow has worked on upstream supply chain issues with the
Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility in the past, and this collaboration adds an important
chemical dimension to that work."
The first concern of this shareholder effort is to
confirm if companies have in place occupational safety protocols in their supply chain facilities.
These shareholders also want to make sure that companies have protections in place to prevent
exposure of dangerous chemicals and other hazardous substances to employees.
Reverend
David M. Schilling, Director of ICCR's Contract Supplier Working Group, explained that ICCR has
been working on supply chain issues for years. However, the toy recalls have highlighted the need
for companies to confront the hazardous working conditions of their entire supply chains, not only
their more heavily monitored factories but the less monitored sub-contractors and
sub-sub-contractors as well.
Often, Schilling told SocialFunds.com, the factories where
toys are actually being put together have some safety precautions put in place. Yet the companies
supplying the building materials of the toys have less to no oversight or monitoring of worker
health and safety.
"Lost in the story of dangerous toys is the worker that is painting the
toys. We need to look at health implications of a product from the consumer through the whole
supply chain," said Schilling. "I've been in toy factories in Southern China where you come into a
room where hundreds of workers are painting toys and there are serious fumes."
Besides
providing workers better ventilation and masks, Schilling pointed out that hazardous materials,
such as lead, need to be removed from products altogether.
This leads to second concern
of the shareholder group: finding out if the manufacturers plan to stop the use of polyvinyl
chloride (PVC) and phthalates in toys and children's products. PVC and phthalates are known human
toxins and IEHN reports that young children are especially vulnerable to these chemicals.
Liroff told SocialFunds.com: "I'd like to see reduction of exposures to toxic chemicals made an
integral part of U.S. and European companies' supply chain management efforts. It's widely known
that local implementation of meaningful environmental protection is more the exception than the
rule in China, so companies sourcing from there need to address this regulatory void."
The
publicly traded companies that the group as focused on include Mattel (ticker: MAT), Hasbro
(ticker: HAS), Jakks Pacific (ticker: JAKK), LeapFrog Enterprises (ticker: LF), RC2 Corp (ticker:
RCRC), and Russ Berrie & Co., Inc. (ticker: RUS).
Yet the shareholders aren't only asking
the toymakers themselves to clean up their supply chains. They are also asking publicly traded
major toy licensors-some with annual licensing revenues in the billions of dollars-to make sure the
companies manufacturing products with their trademarked characters on them to have worker safety
protocols.
The publicly traded licensors targeted by the coalition consist of TimeWarner
(ticker: TWX), Viacom (ticker: VIA), Marvel Entertainment (ticker: MVL), NewsCorp. (ticker: NWS),
General Electric (ticker: GE), and 4Kids entertainment (ticker: KDE).
MacKerron
acknowledges that there are already laws written to protect the workers from occupational hazards
in Chinese facilities. Most corporate codes of conduct also contain sections requiring protection
of workers.
However, MacKerron told SocialFunds.com: "We think these sections may not be
well enforced. We want suppliers to demonstrate to us evidence that local laws or the sections of
their codes of conduct calling for worker safety are being enforced. There is so little disclosure
by companies of such enforcement that there's no way for stakeholders to determine if workers are
being protected."
As You Sow pointed out the work done by Walt Disney Company to accept
responsibility for how licensees manufacture goods using their characters in supply chain
factories. For example, Disney has committed significant resources to an International Labor
Standards Group that does direct auditing and seeks to ensure that its licensees are doing
sufficient labor rights factory auditing.
Unfortunately, shareholders and consumers have
no guarantees whatsoever that toys they buy have been made in a safe environment. Liroff suggests
an industry-by-industry certification scheme, in which companies within individual industries
collaboratively agree on standards they expect to see enforced and implemented in the factories
from which they source their goods. Companies would take collective action on enforcement of the
standards, and report to shareholders and the public on the results.
The International
Council of Toy Industries Care Process (ICTI-CARE) is the toy industry's effort to create and
implement a code of conduct for its suppliers, starting with factories in China, Hong Kong and
Macau where most toys are manufactured. The ICTI-Care website lists what toy brands and toy
factories have passed through their program and have received the ICTI CARE Process Seal of
Compliance.
"Sadly, consumers don't have sufficient assurance that the toys their kids are
exposed to are safe. It's clear that government safety standards have lagged and the Consumer
Product Safety Commission is a regulatory body with at least one and perhaps both of its hands tied
behind its back," said Liroff. "
"To minimize hazards to their children, consumers should
purchase preferentially from reputable companies known to have voluntarily eliminated known or
suspected toxic chemicals from their products," he added.
The fallout from toxic toys and
the manufacturer toy recalls has rippling effects for many involved, not just secret Santas. As
worried parents throw out toys and avoid brands this holiday season, shareholders are worried about
how stocks will perform. Concerned stakeholders are looking past the store shelves and Christmas
stockings to realize that for many workers, especially the sub-contractors who work outside of
manufacturers' regulations, making toys is not a game, but rather, a poisonous position.
©
SRI World Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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