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105 4 Teamsters, Turtles, and Tainted Toys n o o n e W h o toils in an offshore manufacturing facility needs to be reminded of the risks to life and limb that free trade delivers daily to their workplace. Thanks to the efforts of the anti-sweatshop movement, public consciousness has been on a slow but sure learning curve about these hazards. As long as the appalling conditions of low-wage offshore workers do not pose an immediate threat to consumers, however, they can always be glossed over as matters for the individual conscience to process. This is less the case when it comes to the compromised safety of thousands of products on the shelves manufactured or assembled in the loosely regulated production zones that host the modern sweatshop. Beginning in the spring of 2007, revelations about tainted products sourced from China made headlines in a way that threatened to dramatically change the conversation about free trade. It doesn’t take much to ratchet up the anxiety level of American parents . But reactions to the ongoing revelations about the tainted products took a seismic leap in August 2007 after Mattel recalled millions of toys found to be contaminated with lead paint. These included brands in the top rank of children’s consciousness—Sesame Street, Dora the Explorer, Thomas and Friends, Barbie and Tanner, and Polly Pocket. As the recalls continued, the company’s apologies came thick and fast, including to the government of China itself (and implicitly to the global business community ) for having jeopardized the entire “Made in China” operation. Bob Eckers, Mattel’s CEO, was forced to issue unusually strenuous assurances to consumers that the safety of children is of paramount importance to the company (“Because Your Children Are Our Children, Too” headlined one national ad). Of course, no such assurance would ever be offered about the safety of workers in Mattel’s South China supplier factories, who routinely handle toxic materials as part of their jobs. For every American child who might come in contact with a contaminated toy train, thousands of teenage girls toil twelve hours a day for a pittance, inhaling poisonous fumes in factories 106 nice Work if You can Get it that are often firetraps. These workplace hazards have been well documented over the years by the Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee (2001) and the National Labor Committee (2002). But anti-sweatshop activists in these organizations have been unable to prick the conscience of toy consumers as effectively as they have with garment shoppers. That may now have changed, and not just because of the toy scare. The problems with Chinese imports began with mortalities caused by melamine-laced pet foods, retailed by Del Monte, Nestle Purina, and Menu Foods. Next to kids, pets are the most vulnerable and intimately loved of all family members, and so the anxiety hit home quickly. And the list went on, including dodgy drugs, defective automobile tires, poisonous toothpaste, combustible computer batteries, and toxic seafood. By the end of 2007, every product sent from China was suspect. Politically, the scandals were a godsend for China bashers on Capitol Hill and talk radio, where many smug lectures were offered to Beijing about how to put its regulatory house in order. CEOs like Eckers had much more to worry about. The vast sums that they spend on building and polishing corporate brands are all directed toward winning consumer trust, which can evaporate overnight when tainted products show up. In addition, companies now shell out an estimated thirty-one billion dollars annually on PR known as corporate social responsibility (CSR), aimed, in large part, at redeeming brands that have been tarnished by sweatshop exposés. Yet headlines about contaminated goods in onshore shopping baskets are much more threatening to brand reputations than disclosures about substandard working conditions in offshore factories. As the branding crisis deepened, officials in Washington and Beijing rushed to protect the lucrative U.S.-China trade. Congressional committees called hearings, the Consumer Product Safety Commission was asked to upgrade its procedures, and corporations that have long resisted thirdparty monitoring of their offshore suppliers’ workplaces leapt to embrace independent testing and monitoring of their imports. Beijing, for its part, closed down some factories, beefed up inspections, and even executed its former chief of food and drug regulation. But all these measures were about containing the damage close to the point of consumption, and none of them got to the root causes of the problems, which lie in...

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