Churches in the United States including St. Patrick's Cathedral and Trinity Church in New York City sell crucifixes made under horrific Sweatshop conditions in China, where workers, including young girls as young as 15, are forced to work 19 hour shifts seven days a week, a report by the National Labor Committee reveals.
To hide the fact that these are made in China under slave-like labor conditions, the distributor Association for Christian Retail marks them as "Made in Italy.", NLC Director Charles Kernaghan explained.
Before shipments of crucifixes must leave for the U.S., there are even mandatory, all-night 22 ½ to 25-hour shifts from 8:00 a.m. straight through to 6:30 or 9:00 a.m. the following morning and workers are routinely at the factory over 100 hours a week, including being forced to work 51 hours of overtime, which exceeds China’s legal limit by 514 percent, the NLC report finds.
After being forced to work a 19-hour shift, one worker cried out, “Jesus, take pity on me! I’m going to die of exhaustion,” according to the report.
Workers are paid just 26 ½ US cents an hour, less than half China’s legal minimum wage of 55 US cents, while the churches sell the crucifixes for as much as US$32 each.
After mandatory deductions for primitive company dorms and food, the workers’ take-home wage drops to a shocking nine cents an hour, 74 cents a day and $3.70 a week.
"Even the lowest purveyors of cheap sweatshop garments were forced, more than a decade ago, to adopt corporate codes of conduct and factory monitoring schemes—even if just to give lip service—committing to American consumers that any worker, anywhere in the world, who makes their goods would be treated with dignity and their legal rights respected," Kernaghan said. "Evidently, The Association for Christian Retail is more than a decade behind, feeling no need to address respect for even the most fundamental rights of the human beings who make their religious goods."
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