SOLITA

Shuihe Electronics Factory
Dongguan City, Guangdong, China

• Mandatory 14.5 to 18.5-hour daily shifts, from 7:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. or 2:00 a.m.
• Forced to work seven days a week.  Just one day off a month.
• At the factory 113 hours a week.
• Wages of 13 cents an hour;  $12.49 for over 100 hours of work.
• Workers cheated--paid just half the legal minimum and overtime wage.
• Workers paid just 10 cents for each $19.99 Sesame Street “Elmo’s Count and Pop Balloon Game” they make.  Wages come to just one half of one percent of the retail price!
  Mattel spends 30 times as much on advertising each toy as it pays the women in China who make the toy.
• Fined one hour’s wage for every minute late.
• Fined two days’ pay for working too slowly.
• Handling toxic chemical paints, glues, and solvents with bare hands.  No occupational health and safety training.
• Independent union strictly prohibited.  Any attempt to defend basic rights will result in firing and perhaps prison.
• Fourteen workers per crowded dirty dorm room sharing double level bunk beds.
• Cafeteria food is “awful” and too little.
• During peak season, workers try to get by on four hours’ sleep a night.
• Mattel, Wal-Mart audits are a joke – the factory is notified 10 days in advance.  The factory keeps two sets of books.
• No worker has ever heard of, let alone seen Mattel’s, Hasbro’s, Toys R Us’ or Wal-Mart’s so-called Codes of Conduct.
• Mattel marks up the price of the toys by 520 to 638 percent