Auditing China With CARE: Making Toys Ethically

By TDmonthly Staff
January 1900

There’s a problem with Chinese manufacturing practices, and the toy industry is trying to do something about it. But will it be enough?

The ICTI (International Council of Toy Industries) has introduced the CARE Process (Caring, Awareness, Responsible, Ethical), a program to support ethical manufacturing, focused at China (where 70% of the world’s toy volume is manufactured). Its intent is to provide a single, fair, thorough and consistent program to monitor toy factories’ compliance with ITCI’s Code of Business Practices. On the date-determined, the forward-looking toy manufacturers who have signed on will refuse to work with any factories that are not Code compliant. Period. End of trouble.

Too bad CARE has problems both without and within.

Dan Viederman, executive director of Verite, an international watchdog of fair labor practices, reveals the extreme labor abuses taking place in China.

Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey has introduced bills in the house to crack down on slave-made products coming into the United States from China, but to little effect.

Jeff Fiedler, president of the AFL-CIO Food and Allied Service Trades Department, explains that no administration really wants to do anything about it.

Tom Conley, president of the Toy Industry Association, speaks of how most (but not all) American manufacturers are rallying for CARE to lead the way.

And Harry Wu, international activist, tells of the dark world of Chinese labor camps known as Laogais.

TDmonthly Magazine reports on the heroic effort of many of the toy industry’s biggest (and smallest) companies to put a stem to China’s unethical manufacturing practices. Read who they are and who they aren’t, as we Audit China with CARE.