China frees 3 undercover factory investigators
The men had reported abuse at facilities that produced Ivanka Trump shoes
Chinese authorities have released three activists who investigated labor conditions at factories that manufactured shoes for Ivanka Trump’s brand and other U.S. footwear companies.
The men were granted bail roughly a month after they were arrested by authorities in southeast China, according to a Wednesday announcement by China Labor Watch, an organization that has investigated workplace conditions at facilities that supply many of the world’s bestknown companies.
“China Labor Watch hopes that the court will provide the investigators with a fair trial,” the organization said in a written statement.
Working undercover between March and late May, the activists checked on the treatment of employees at the Dongguan Huajian and Jiangxi Huajian factories in southeast China. The monitoring documented numerous violations of labor rules, China Labor Watch said in a report issued earlier this month.
Factory managers verbally and sometimes physically abused employees, who typically worked 15hour days and had to wait until late April to receive payment for hours they worked in March, according to the report.
Additionally, the workers were paid roughly $352 for 350 monthly work hours, below what China’s labor law stipulates, the report said.
In comments to the Associated Press, the Huajian Group de- clined to respond to specific questions but broadly denied all allegations, calling them “completely not true to the facts, taken out of context, exaggerated.” The company also said China Labor Watch “invented so-called ‘facts’ by illegal means of buying undercover work, which has already affected the enterprise’s normal business seriously and affected the survival and employment of tens of thousands of staff.”
Along with producing shoes for the Ivanka Trump brand, at least one of the factories has done work for such well-known U.S. companies as Marc Fisher Footwear, Easy Spirit, Nine West, Karl Lagerfeld, Naturalizer and Guess, the report said.
Trump stepped down from day-to-day involvement with her brand in January when she became a White House adviser to President Trump, her father. Abigail Klem, the president of the Ivanka Trump brand, said in a statement earlier this month that the company’s shoes had not been produced at the China factories since March.
Other companies cited in the China Labor Watch report did not respond to previous emails seeking comment.