FACTORY staff making some of Walt Disney’s most popular Christmas toys are working up to 18 hours a day for as little as 16p an hour, an investigation has found.

Workers at the factories in southern China also claim they have had to stay in cramped dormitories housing up to 16 people and that they are fined if they spend more than five minutes in the lavatory. At one factory they receive just one day off a month.

The factories make Minnie Mouse toys and soft toys based on the Tigger and Eeyore characters from Disney’s Winnie the Pooh films. Disney’s British stores sell Chinese-made toys of these characters for up to £60, but it is not known if this includes any toys produced at the two factories investigated.

John Hilary, director of policy at War on Want, said: “These toys have been produced as a result of the exploitation of some of the poorest people in the world.”

Disney said neither factory was an authorised manufacturer and investigations were ongoing.

The Sunday Times investigated the factories — Yonglida Toys in the city of Dongguan and Haowei Toys in Shenzhen — after a tip-off from Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (Sacom), a Hong Kong- based human rights organisation.

Haowei was investigated by Disney after ex-workers launched a legal action in May. Workers subsequently went on strike over conditions in September.

Over the past two weeks a Sunday Times reporter carried out a series of interviews with workers at the factories. At Yonglida, workers said they can be on the production lines from 7.30am to 2am and are paid 700-1,000 yuan a month (£47-£68), about half the average wage in China, according to official figures.

They also said that their 16- man dormitories had no hot water in the evenings and filthy toilets, even though they paid the company about £8.20 a month for food and accommodation.

Employees at Haowei Toys — which produces moulded figures of Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh — said that pay had increased since the September strike, but claimed they were still exceeding the 36-hour legal monthly limit on overtime.

One 40-year-old man from Hunan province, who left Haowei earlier this year and is now suing the company with four other ex-workers for unpaid wages, claimed that for five years his normal working day was from 8am to 11pm every day, with only Saturday evenings off.

He sculpted models out of heated plastic, working from photographs of characters from Disney films such as Pirates of the Caribbean and Beauty and the Beast.

“When I first arrived I felt very excited and everything seemed much better than in my home town,” said the man through an interpreter. “It looked like fun. But shortly afterwards I realised the reality — the long working hours and the poor conditions.

“When we decided to fight a legal case against the company, the employer told me, ‘It is no use for you because we have good relations with the government and . . . Disney’.”

Disney said in a statement last week that it wished to improve conditions at Haowei rather than force it to close. It said “areas of non-compliance” had been found in June but improvements had been made.

In November, Sacom released a report on conditions at Yonglida, describing the factory as a “Disney sweatshop”. It alleged that “neither the local labour law nor Disney’s protective codes are enforced”.

Workers claim the company withholds a “deposit” of 40 days’ salary, which they would lose if they left.

Meng, a 23-year-old production worker who combs soft toys to remove dirt and fluff before they are put into boxes, said: “The bosses

are very harsh with the workers. If you say you are tired and you don’t want to work late into the night, the manager will immediately say, ‘You are fired. Please go.’

“If you refuse to go they will get the security guard to remove you. There are no set working hours. There is a quota every day. When I finish my quota for the day, I can leave. Sometimes it takes until midnight. Sometimes, in the peak season, it can take until 2am. My quota at the moment is 4,000 toys a day.”

Disney toys are produced in China through a complex network of subcontractors. The corporation sells licences to local businesses to produce and market toys based on its characters. They in turn contract with manufacturers.

Licensees are required to ensure that factories meet Disney’s code of conduct on labour conditions. Disney can withdraw its authorisation to produce licensed products from those factories it finds have breached their obligations.

This weekend Mark Spears, director of international labour standards at Walt Disney, in Burbank, California, said “Walt Disney take claims of unfair labour practices very seriously and investigate any such allegations thoroughly. These situations often involve multiple parties and remediation for improvement is key to the long-term wellbeing of the workers.” The company said neither Haowei nor Yonglida are currently authorised to produce Disney toys and that its auditors were being denied access to Yonglida.

Spears said that if conditions at Yonglida were as alleged to The Sunday Times, “the situation would be in direct violation of our code and our expectations”.

A spokesman for Haowei said: “It is not true to say that employees worked for 18 hours in our factory. We do have overtime but not that much overtime. We admit that working conditions at Haowei were not good. It’s not all our fault because the building is old. Since the strike in September, we improved conditions for workers.”

A Yonglida representative said: “We are a responsible toy factory. Our top management have taken steps to review and improve our workers’ remuneration and benefits regularly to comply with Chinese labour laws.”

Additional reporting: Joshua Dresner

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