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Walt Disney isn't all innocent as it looks or seems. Behind the scenes of this "glamorous" company, there are human rights violations committed daily around the world. In one of their factories in a small Caribbean Island of Haiti, workers are paid 28 cents to stitch an Aladdin t-shirt. After taxes, workers at this sweatshop earn around 15-20 dollars a month. In Vietnam, Walt Disney runs a sweatshop that produces the plastic toys for happy meals. These workers make only 17 cents an hour. Three years ago, 200 women from this factory were hospitalized due to being exposed to acetone, and a toxic substance. Yet, the factory refused to make any changes in ventilation system or health code. (http://ihscslnews.org/view_article.php?id=67)

Besides poor conditions, the workforce is composed of almost entirely women and children. Most workers are between the ages of 10 and 30. Women are encouraged not to get pregnant because they usually get fired. There are also numerous accounts of supervisor's selecting mistresses out of their workforce. The worker is left to choose between complying and losing her job, devastating when she is living in dire poverty. These conditions are found frequently throughout most of the Asian sweatshops.

Recently, people have begun to encourage Disney to take responsibility for the quality of their overseas factories. Shirley Slesinger Lasswell, husband of the late Stephen Slesinger who acquired the rights to Winnie the Pooh in the 1930's, has taken a stand. When, she found out about beatings, 14 hour days, and poor wages at Disney's Dhaka sweatshop, she began to argue for better conditions. The National Labor Committee has taken her side in the fight to improve Disney production facilities worldwide. (http://ihscslnews.org/view_article.php?id=67)

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On August 18, 2006, there were accusations of Apple, a big company on electronics using sweatshop labor. An investigation was performed and found no forced labor. Instead, they found that the workers were exceeding the company's limit on hours and days to be worked per week. A British newspaper, the "Mail on Sunday", accused Apple without any proof that workers at the factory were paid as little as $50 a month and forced to work 15-hour shifts making the devices.

The Apple team reviewed personnel files and hiring practices and found no evidence of child labor or any forced labor. However, they did find that workers were exceeding the company's limits for overtime, a maximum of 60 hours or six days a week. Apple has hired Verite, an international consultant on workplace standards, to continue monitoring conditions at the factory, it said. "We are committed to ensuring compliance with our Code of Conduct and will complete audits of all final assembly suppliers of Mac and iPod products in 2006," the report said. It added that "in cases where a supplier's efforts in this area do not meet our expectations, their contracts will be terminated." (http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71619-0.html?tw=rss.index)

In the year of 1999, Gap was sued by their workers on the island of Saipan in the Western Pacific over the working conditions in their garment factories. Gap had to pay a $20 million settlement after the court heard "indentured" workers, withheld wages and forced overtime. Gap has admitted to the failings and announced that they were canceling contracts with 136 factories because of low pay and horrible working conditions. (http://www.organicconsumers.org/clothes/nike041805.cfm)

Levi Strauss was accused of firing workers in their factories in Haiti and Mexico for being union members, as well as using low wages to prop up profits. No Sweat, a campaign group found evidence of abuses at a factory in Mexico. Levi Strauss sent their own investigators and admitted to the accusations and worked with a contractor to ensure the unions. They also started to buy some of its cotton from organic sources. (http://www.organicconsumers.org/clothes/nike041805.cfm)

In the 1970s, Nike first produced their sneakers in South Korea and Taiwan. Workers there soon gained freedom and higher wages. Soon after, Nike went into search for cheap labor and found them in Indonesia, China, and mostly Vietnam, where labor laws were poorly enforced. There were laws in these countries that disabled them to form independent labor unions. Out of all the shoe companies, why Nike? First, many complaints were made by Nike workers and local labor groups. Second, Nike is so profitable and sells their sneakers at high prices and can afford to double the workers' wages without increasing the retail price. Third, Nike is the biggest shoe company in the world and puts itself out as an industry leader.

Nike controls 49% of the sports shoe market and employs more than 600,000 people in contract factories. Workers in Indonesia, Thailand and other countries have complained in the past of 77-hour weeks, a ban on unions and dangerous conditions in which employees have lost limbs through crush injuries.(www.commondreams.org) Just two years ago from April 2005, Nike defended a court case where they were accused by activists of lying and making misleading claims about its working practices in a corporate and social responsibility report. The company eventually donated $2 million to the American Fair Labor Association as part of an out of court settlement.

Currently, it has published its first corporate and social responsibility report(CSR) in four years, with details of all its factories and a pledge to increase monitoring of working conditions.

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