Feb 23, 2009 04:30 AM
A Chinese recycling facility that bought thousands of tonnes of paper from Toronto's blue box system has been accused by a Hong Kong human rights organization of labour violations and causing numerous worker injuries and deaths.
Allegations of worker abuse published in April 2008 by Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM) quote a saying among workers at the massive Nine Dragons plant in southern China: "Injury happens monthly; death happens quarterly."
A follow-up inspection by a Chinese federation of trade unions also reported employee allegations of dangerous working conditions and mistreatment of both managers and workers.
Both studies were noted in the 2008 human rights report by the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China, describing a workplace with 50 industrial accidents, including two deaths, in the past year. The commission wrote: "The Union found the company's imposition of excessive penalties on employees to be a serious problem – fines totalling $180,000 were imposed on 70 per cent of company's workforce last year."
The accusations were noted at a time when Toronto was shipping to Nine Dragons. They raise serious questions about the use of recyclers in Asia, where factory conditions are largely unknown, and about the city's plan to monitor overseas safety and environmental practices.
Toronto does not sell directly to the recyclers. Instead, it pays brokers to find buyers for its commodities. When that market was hit by the global economic meltdown last fall, China's demand dropped, creating a scramble for new takers.
China's orders started to pick up last month, but city spokesperson Geoff Rathbone said the long-term plan is to seek more local solutions to alleviate ethical concerns and reduce recycling's carbon footprint.
Glass is one example: Cities in the region have put their bottles together to entice a recycling facility to open in Brampton. The environment ministry is pushing for blue box program changes that could include audits of foreign shipments.
SACOM spokesperson Charles Ho said researchers went undercover to interview the mill's employees because its owner – reportedly the richest woman in China – had opposed a labour law that provides protections to workers.
Nine Dragons spokesperson Jane Kun denied SACOM's findings, saying in an email that no labour laws had been broken: "After the report was released, relevant government departments had conducted investigations into each of those allegations but found ND Paper was materially in compliance with applicable laws and regulations."
SACOM researchers visited the Dongguan plant in southern Guangdong province – home to China's manufacturing boom – after a Dec. 13, 2007, strike to protest three months of wage cuts. The plant employs about 9,000 workers.
Researchers interviewed employees from the raw materials department, where workers, who hand pick the dumped paper, complained of poor ventilation, dust and exposure to "foreign bacteria."
Workers in the stockyard, where forklifts are used to move cargo, said they suffered the most injuries of all because of narrow passageways, fast-moving machinery and inadequate training.
The report described the "infected, inflamed or swollen" hands of workers who peeled apart paper using bare hands and fingernails.
Numerous employees were fired and then used as non-staff "dispatch" workers, losing their right to stay in the nearby residence and to paid time off. Many were fined for infractions, such as suffering injuries, using the wrong entrance or eating on the job.
Researchers visited the Mayong Hospital, where injured Nine Dragons workers were taken, and found it "heavily guarded" by security officers who would not allow visitors unless they had specific identifying information about patients.
SACOM's Ho said the company fixed some problems after the report was published. The trade union, which visited on an official tour, did not see evidence of the "sweatshop" conditions suggested in the SACOM report.
Kun, the Nine Dragons spokesperson from Wonderful Sky Financial Group in Hong Kong, said the company took media on a tour of the Dongguan facility after the report was published. Reporters saw a "safe and tidy" working environment. The report was "written without any verification from the company and projected a false perspective on ND Paper."
She said Nine Dragons would not give an interview as it is "in a blackout period" while preparing for its interim report. A Feb. 18 company statement said its profit for the first half of the fiscal year had fallen 69 per cent because of the global recession and raw material costs.
SACOM's report is supported by China Labour Bulletin, an internationally known group that aims to represent Chinese workers. It said such problems are widespread in southern China's industries.
Toronto's two brokers started shipping paper to Nine Dragons in 2007 – 20,000 tonnes that year and 19,000 in 2008 – the same time frame worker abuse allegations were documented by the report.
The city was paid $30 to $40 for each tonne of mixed paper sent to China, roughly $600,000 to $800,000 for each of those years.
Toronto's Rathbone, general manager of the city's solid waste department, said the city relied upon positive reports about Nine Dragons after visits by an employee and its paper brokers.
As cities across Ontario increase their landfill-diversion rates, the recycling industry has grown increasingly important, creating mountains of materials that need a quick buyer.
Internationally, Nine Dragons was considered a success story. The company expanded alongside a burgeoning global market into a billion-dollar corporation, recycling paper into cardboard packaging used for the consumer goods China exports back to North America.
However, "(China) is a faraway marketplace in a very different commercial setting, with very different regulations, laws and rules," said Jo-Anne St. Godard, executive director of the Recycling Council of Ontario. "Even if you did go over and wanted to see (the working conditions), there is nothing to say you would be able to see it."
Concerns about China's recycling system were noted in a 2006 study by Waste Diversion Ontario, which oversees Ontario's recycling system. After visiting several sites, researchers concluded there were still many questions about safety and environmental practices.
Former Toronto employee Craig Bartlett, now waste manager for Durham Region, was one of the researchers on that trip, and had a tour of the main facility in Nine Dragons' massive complex.
"The floors were cleaner than a hospital floor. Workers were in hard hats and safety boots. The size, the automation, the cleanliness, was spectacular," Bartlett said.
The tour, he noted, did not take them to the departments cited in the report.