Ed Brayton is a freelance writer and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
An absolutely appalling story that I'm working on for a longer expose for the Michigan Messenger. The National Labor Committee released a report documenting that crucifixes sold in Christian bookstores all over the US are being made in a sweatshop in China that is far below even the Chinese legal standards. A sample of the findings:
At the Junxingye factory in China, the mostly young women--including several 15- and 16-year-olds--making crucifixes are forced to work 14 hours to 15½ hours a day, from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. or 11:30 p.m., seven days a week. They also work frequent 18-hour and 19-hour shifts ending at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. Before shipments of crucifixes must leave for the United States, there are even mandatory, all-night 22½-hour to 25-hour shifts, from 8 a.m. straight through to 6:30 a.m. or 9 a.m. the following morning. Workers are routinely at the factory more than 100 hours a week, including being forced to work 51 hours of overtime, which exceeds China's legal limit by 514 percent. Young women go for months on end without a day off.
On top of that, the workers live in horrible conditions and are forced to pay to live there, further reducing their wages and forcing them to live in mold-infested dorms. There are also indications of unsafe chemicals. The NLC sent people in and they managed to smuggle out documents and pictures. The primary importer of these items, the Association for Christian Retail (founded as the Christian Booksellers Association) is offering only vague denials at this point. Stay tuned for more.
Comments
And, don't tell me, the crosses have a high lead content, too?
Posted by: Abel Pharmboy | November 27, 2007 9:40 AM
I bet Janet Folger and WorldNutDaily will report this incident as an example of poor Chinese Christian girls being persecuted by the godless commies. And when the NLC takes down the Association for Christian Retail, that'll be the democrats persecuting Christians.
Posted by: Wes | November 27, 2007 9:46 AM
Best thing they could do would be to admit this is going on, get rid of the people who knew about the situation (someone had to know) and then find another source that treats its workers right.
Posted by: Rev. AJB | November 27, 2007 10:37 AM
True, Rev, but then, if these people were used to acting in the way you describe there would be no cause for complaint about the excesses of the Religious Right; they would just be nice people with odd ideas.
Posted by: Valhar2000 | November 27, 2007 11:04 AM
Hear, Hear Valhar!!! Truer words have never been spoken.
Posted by: Paul Merda | November 27, 2007 12:15 PM
How did that song go again?
"You can tell Saint Peter that I can't go
Cause I owe my soul to the company store"
Posted by: Thony C. | November 27, 2007 12:25 PM
sweatshop in China that is far below even the Chinese legal standards.
But what percentage of Chinese workers actually feel the benefit of the legal standards on the books there? That is, how much is it enforced? My guess would be, sadly, shamefully little. This example is likely only a symbolically ironic small sample of an enormous ethical problem for the whole world. And the U.S. is particularly locked in a consumer-producer deathgrip with it.
Posted by: cm | November 27, 2007 3:30 PM
One shudders to think how many goods we all inadvertently purchase which may have similar labor histories these days.
As if we could possibly keep tabs on items and suppliers ourself. This is what I feel we pay our taxes for.
What we have here, I think, is a perfect moral argument for governmental regulation, and trade agreements which are based on ethical labor requirements.
Posted by: Gingerbaker | November 27, 2007 4:29 PM
We're all happy with the low prices on all sorts of goods imported from China so we don't ask too many questions about why they're so cheap.
China's economic boom is being built on the backs of cheap labour just as it is in India and just as it was in the British industrial revolution.
What's to be done, though? How the Chinese manage their economy and organize and pay their workforce is up to them.
Posted by: Ian H Spedding FCD | November 27, 2007 6:56 PM
Ultimately Ian the only way to end this sort of exploitation is for a country to become wealthy enough that better opportunites are available. The British industrial revolution is an apposite example, when Britian got richer, this sort of thing stopped happening.
Posted by: James | November 28, 2007 12:29 AM
Posted by: Inoculated Mind | November 28, 2007 4:32 PM
Just a note about the Association for Christian Retail. They are being pulled into this by the NLC simply because the company that imports these crosses is a member of theirs. The NLC erroneously report that it is the Association that does the importing. In fact they do not. They are an association, just like any local Chamber of Commerce. So, if your local McDonald's franchise made fries with too much grease, would you chastise the local Chamber of Commerce for it simply because the franchise owner is a member? Or would you go to McDonald's to vent your concerns. Same deal with the Association for Christian Retail. They are an association for the retail Christian Bookstore, and allow suppliers to become members based on their own voluntary information. They do not police the suppliers and investigate their thousands of products. They are in place to support the retailer, and if the NLC did a bit more simple research, they would have found they could have gotten a lot of support from these people by letting the stores know about the problem. However, simply because the website for the Association lists one member who is listed in the report, they assume they are the problem. They should have approached the Association, and told them one of their members is a concern to them, and there would have been cooperation, rather than defense, on the issue.
Posted by: Mike | December 2, 2007 6:51 PM
Mike, I think that's nonsense. Do they not have a responsibility to cooperate regardless of how they were approached? The responsibility to investigate and react to the situation is demanded by the nature of the allegations, not by how they are approached about it. The ACR is not just some loose association, they are the ones who make the bridge between suppliers and retailers. The supplier is stonewalling. So is the ACR. We can only hope that the retailers themselves will take the situation more seriously. Then again, I called the largest chain of Christian stores in the country, Family Christian Stores, and they wouldn't even return a call or make a statement.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | December 2, 2007 7:06 PM
Ed - don't get me wrong about the labor issue here. I think it's terrible what's happening over there too. But if you've never worked in the Christian industry, then it's easy paint every one with the same brush. The NLC didn't even tell the ACR that they were doing this report. They just pulled the info off their web site, and incriminated them without the chance to even know what in the world they were talking about. As for calling Family Christian Stores, I'd say they too are caught off guard by this. But then, just becuase the product is sold by a company that is a member of the ACR, it does not mean that every store automatically carries the product either. You may not have had a reply from Family becuase they may just not carry the suppliers products anyway, and as a result have no idea what you are asking about.
Posted by: Mike | December 2, 2007 9:42 PM
Ed - this has nothing to do with the article in question, but I did come across an interesting blog from the toy perspective. Richard Gottlieb went to an 'upscale' toy store in NY, and aksed for toys NOT made in China. The answer is very interesting. Click on this link: http://www.playthings.com/blog/390000439/post/1780018178.html to see the entire story. I guess the real question now is - do consumers really care?
Posted by: Mike | December 5, 2007 12:08 PM