Does Mattel’s Outlay Really Help Workers?

Re “Sweat, Fear and Resignation Amid All the Toys,” Nov. 26: I would like to add a few points about the money spent by Mattel on its state-of-the-art facilities, monitoring factories, upgrading plants and training contractors. The $500 million: There is absolutely no transparency on how this money has been spent. Was it used to build and renovate facilities or to really improve the working conditions? The audit report of April 2004 regarding Mattel’s Mexican-owned facilities still shows that workers complain about heat, noise and odors. They are not always paid for overtime hours.

The $10 million a year spent on monitoring facilities, upgrading plants and training contractors is very little money to improve working conditions of thousands of workers, especially since we don’t know how much is spent on auditing versus improvements, and compared with the hundreds of millions spent yearly on advertising and promotion and the millions spent on Mattel Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles.

Marie-Claude

Hessler-Grisel

Paris