U.S.-LABOUR: School Kids Take On Mickey Mouse

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Dec 12 1996 (IPS) - The Walt Disney Corporation has always had a following among children, but the students at Brooklyn’s Berkeley Carroll elementary school are no fans of Mickey Mouse.

Students ranging from seven to 10 years old joined together at the school to put out a newsletter with a tearful Mickey Mouse logo beneath the caption, “Don’t Trust the Mouse!”

“Did you know that Haitian Disney workers want just 58 cents an hour to support their family?” the newsletter asks. Inside, students contributed articles accusing Burmese factories that make Disney goods of paying workers only 45 cents each day, and protesting the use of child labour worldwide.

One cartoon illustrates the childrens’ complaints vividly, depicting a large Mickey Mouse shouting at a small worker who is stitching clothes, “Get back to work!” The caption reads simply: “How nice is the mouse team?”

Last week, the Berkeley Carroll students also presented skits and speeches about the abuse of workers in subcontractor firms that provide apparel for Disney in both Burma and Haiti, criticising the company’s chief executive officer, Michael Eisner. In both countries, the children argued, subcontractors make clothes cheaply for Disney by paying rock-bottom wages and offering poor working conditions.

“As a consumer, Disney will listen to me,” one student, Chloe Callahan-Flintoft, said. “We should tell everyone what Disney is doing, sign petitions, write letters to Disney, pass out flyers and do anything else we can do to force Disney to listen to us.”

The entire performance is part of a week-long, nationwide protest directed against Disney, and sponsored by several activist groups, including the New York-based National Labour Committee and California’s Sweatshop Watch and West Side Alliance.

In their effort, the groups have rallied to their side some 500 Californian nuns, who last Friday accused Eisner of abusing worker rights while reciting their liturgy. Nuns in Canada, Lesotho and Brazil have also joined the protest. Further demonstrations in front of the main Disney retail store in New York are planned for Saturday.

The main item on the groups’ agenda is for the U.S.-based entertainment conglomerate to enter into negotiations with its Haitian subcontractors and workers, to raise the wages there from the present 30 cents an hour to a bare “living wage” of 58 cents an hour.

“Disney should demand that its contractors around the world guarantee respect for basic human rights and end the practise of exploiting the misery of Third World countries that force wages below subsistence levels,” said Charles Kernaghan, the National Labour Committee’s executive director.

Kernaghan argued that, during the busy Christmas holiday retail season, the protests have touched a nerve. “No one wants to purchase products made by children or teenaged women forced to work long hours under sweatshop conditions for starvation wages,” he contended.

Disney has refrained from public comment on its subcontractors’ practises. But one Disney spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS, “We have contacted the Disney licensees (in Haiti) and work with them to make sure they are doing the right thing.” He stressed that Disney does not employ workers directly either in Haiti or in Burma.

He added that Disney currently has no licensees manufacturing its apparel in Burma, following the departure recently of the New York-based Mamiye Brothers subcontractor from that country.

There are few signs that the protest has harmed Disney’s sales so far this holiday season. The conglomerate has one of the biggest movie hits of the winter, ‘101 Dalmatians’, and has enjoyed a steady surge in its film-related and seasonal merchandising this season.

But the activists are aware that Disney, more than most companies, is acutely sensitive about its public image. Ellen Braune, a National Labour Committee spokeswoman, told IPS that Disney will find it difficult to maintain its image as a family- oriented company if children are taking its practises to task.

“Until there is a serious response on Disney’s part — straight answers and not public relations — the protests will continue,” Kernaghan said. “It’s time for the Disney ‘family values’ corporation to do the right thing for the women and children who work for them.”