Chinese Maker of Ivanka Trump's Shoes Looks for Cheaper Labor
Chinese Maker of Ivanka Trump's Shoes Looks for Cheaper Labor
- The Chinese factory workers who make shoes for Ivanka Trump and other designers gather at 7:40 every morning to sing songs.
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- The Chinese factory workers who make shoes for Ivanka Trump and other designers gather at 7:40 every morning to sing songs.
Sometimes,
they extol worker solidarity. Usually, they trumpet ties between China
and Africa, the theme of their employer’s corporate anthem.
That’s
no accident. With many workers here complaining about excessive hours
and seeking higher pay, the factory owner wants to send their jobs to
Ethiopia.
The
employer, Huajian International, now faces scrutiny from labor
activists for how it treats workers. Chinese authorities this week detained an activist
who went undercover in the company’s factory here for a labor rights
group. Two other activists who worked at Huajian are missing; it’s
unclear whether they were detained.
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The
activists’ focus on Huajian’s factories points to changing labor
conditions in China as manufacturers try to get more work out of an
increasingly expensive labor pool.