China may cancel Olympic contracts

BEIJING — Red-faced organizers of the Beijing Olympics threatened Monday to cancel the contracts of companies using child labor and violating minimum-wage rules to make Olympic-licensed products.

In a report released Sunday, PlayFair 2008 — an alliance of global trade union and labor groups — cited four factories in southern China for labor violations and accused the International Olympic Committee of doing too little to monitor the production of products carrying the official Olympic five-rings logo.

"We have very clear requirements and specific rules and regulations to manage the manufacturing," said Jiang Xiaoyu, executive vice president of the Beijing organizing committee, speaking Monday in Hong Kong.

"If they breach our regulations, then we will tackle this problem seriously. If they very seriously breach this regulation, they will no longer work as our manufacturer."

Officials of the organizing committee said they had not seen the 30-page report until Monday. It details the use workers as young as 12 and accuses companies of falsifying employment records and coercing workers to lie about their terms of employment.

The Beijing Olympics are expected to be the most profitable in the games' history, attracting 500,000 foreign visitors. Corporate sponsors have swarmed to BOCOG, hoping to use the event to crack China's rapidly growing consumer market.

Beijing is spending about $40 billion to rebuild the Chinese capital for the games, a sharp contrast of the legal minimum wage in southern China of $90 monthly.

"BOCOG attaches great importance to the production and sales of our licensed products," Jiang added. "We have specific and explicit, very clear requirements on the manufacturer of our licensed products. Right now, BOCOG is investigating and if the issue really exists, BOCOG will tackle it very seriously."

"To use child labor is also against the government's laws and regulations," Jiang added.

BOCOG confirmed the four companies named in the report, entitled, "No medal for the Olympics on labor rights," received contracts to produce officials Olympics merchandise including caps, bags and stationery products.

The companies are:

— Lekit Stationery Company, Ltd.

— Yue Wing Cheong Light Products (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd.

— Eagle Leather Products Ltd.

— Mainland Headwear Holdings Ltd.

Officials at Mainland Headwear could not be reached for comment. The other three companies, contacted earlier by The Associated Press, said they had not violated labor laws.

The Switzerland-based IOC said it does not have direct control over all official products that carry the Olympic label. It said it has created policies on fair labor standards that it expects Olympic host cities and licensed manufacturers to follow.

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