Santa’s Real Workshop is a Sweatshop in China
It’s fun to tell our children fun stories about Santa and his elves merrily making all their Christmas wishes magically come true. But in 2017, maybe it’s time we tell them the real story — the story many grown-ups don’t even know, because they prefer to remain willfully ignorant.
Santa’s workshop is not at the North Pole. It’s in China. And his elves are desperately poor migrant workers, whose repressive government has given them no choice but to sell themselves into indentured servitude to corporations that make cheap, plastic goodies for European and American children.

Santa’s real elves work in a sweat shop in China
They work literally around the clock in sweltering heat and toxic fumes, performing the same repetitive, monotonous task for 14 to 20 hours straight. If they are lucky enough to make it “home” to their factory dormatories, where they are packed in 12-20 workers per room, they might catch a couple of hours of sleep before they do it all over again the next day, seven days a week.

Toy factory dormitory bunk beds
If you think this is an exaggeration, watch the videos below.
The first is a news story about a little town in China called Yiwu where 60 percent of the world’s Christmas decorations are made in 700 factories.
The U.S. imported half a billion dollars worth of Christmas decorations from Yiwu in 2015.
It’s such an important exporter of cheap products to Europe, China opened an 8000 mile rail-line from Yiwu to Spain.
While this story is depressing enough, Chinese Christmas decorations are only the tip of the iceberg.
Globally, consumers spend nearly $100 billion on toys each year, most of them for Christmas. 80% of these toys come from thousands of factories in China, mostly from a city outside of Hong Kong called Shenzhen.
In the documentary Santa’s Workshop below, the non-profit human rights and environmental organization Swedwatch exposes the little white lie behind those pretty packages under the tree:
Several Scandinavian toy companies gave the filmmakers permission to visit select factories.
In covert interviews, workers making dolls and stuffed animals for Disney claim to work seven days a week from 6:30 am to midnight. During peak holiday preparation season, during the heat of the summer, workers say they sometimes work until 4 am.
In another factory that makes toy cars, filmmakers said the air was “stifling and it was difficult to breathe.”
When asked why more than 90 percent of the workers were female, factory manager Tai Guang Lai told filmmakers “women are easier to manage.”
The filmmakers found workers hands and arms scarred from cuts and burns from hot plastic molds. They watched women fall asleep on their work tables and faint when they stood up for lunch break.

During peak season, some factory workers never make it back to their dorms
Asked about why they were fainting, one manager said a lot of them skip breakfast to save money, but that it was “no big deal” … “they recover quickly.”

During lunch break two women support another woman who has just fainted
Factory managers and toy company representatives insisted that workers “want” to work overtime, so they can make extra money.
But workers interviewed in secret told a different story. They say they are not guaranteed a minimum wage and are paid according to how fast they work. They say their pay is so low, they couldn’t survive without overtime.
While the factories all present acceptable stats about pay, overtime and working conditions to buyers, the filmmakers say both sides are aware it’s a farce. When toy companies inspect factories, workers say they are paid extra to give acceptable answers to questions and that unacceptable answers result in punishment.
An investigation by Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee shows 7 out of 9 suppliers cheat in this way to make it appear they comply with national labor laws.
Factory managers say toy companies make impossible demands — pay your employees well, but keep your prices low … don’t require too much overtime, ship this to us in 30 days.
Toy companies blame consumers for being unwilling to pay more for their products.
“When we were manufacturing in Sweden, customers were not willing to pay the extra cost,” Tomas Person, managing director of Brio, said in the film.
So prices are kept low at the expense of the workers.
Why don’t the workers complain? Because China is not a democracy. Protests are crushed by the military and workers who try to organize unions are arrested.
Because of their enormous population combines with repressive trade union laws, the commoners of China are ripe for exploitation.
Its not only factory workers who pay the high cost of cheap toys, but everyone who lives in the area. The toy factories dump untreated waste including chromium, lead, mercury, phosphorus and ammonia into the surrounding environment.
Mercury levels in the water and fish around factories are 280 times higher than national requirements. Locals downstream use the water for drinking and irrigation, saying its the only water they have.
So maybe next year, we can make our own gifts, buy local, or at least buy “fair-trade” toys. Maybe if we didn’t buy 10 or 20 plastic toys that will end up in a landfill, we could afford to buy one or two high-quality ones like these fairly traded finger puppets from Peru:
Making toys for WHITE CHILDREN, what the hell, are WHITE CHILDREN the only kids that get toys for Christmas… I was reading this article until I came to this comment.. Gog to hell Sara Burrows, you are part of what is wrong with this country…
Go to hell, not Gog to hell
It doesn’t say “White children” anywhere in the article; Linda Bassett, put on your reading glasses!
No where did it say “white” children… it said European and American children. Obviously because Europe and America are their biggest buyers…
I also didn’t see it say “white children” anywhere in the article. There are other races in Europe and United States besides Caucasians. It seems that there are certain breeds of people on the Internet (both black and white) who like to engage in race baiting.
The blame is being put on the consumers who are the market, but we don’t make the marketplace. The sellers and manufacturers do.
I suppose the “white lie” remark is what sounds like another attack on whites, which it might even be, granting clever composition.
America and Europe are the wealthy markets for certain products so I guess that is where items will be made to be sold.
This story is not about anything secret or new.
This is why it is important to restore American values, share them everywhere and help raise all people to the level of dignity we once aspired to.
Linda, nowhere in this article does it say “white children”! (I read it twice just to confirm.)
Damn troll.
To be fair, it did. I changed it to European and American children for those who like things said less directly.
Well done for changing the wording, it is an important distinction. The skin colour is irrelevent when what you’re talking about is privilege in terms of the government and regimens the people are living in. Children of all races and backgrounds in America and Europe (supposedly) democratic countries are the recipients of the mass produced products made in sweat shops by less fortunate people living with fewer workers’ rights and freedoms. The world market is unfair and imbalanced.
Interesting article. It’s unfortunate you chose to single out “white children” as the benefactor of all these poor immigrants slaving away to make cheap plastic toys.
I think they changed it to American and European kids. I think their intent was not to single out ethnicity, but to emphasize that these people are not laboring for their own childrens’ toys, but are killing themselves for other people’s kids… OUR kids (no matter the color)
Try not getting so caught up in the exact wording and try to understand what they MEANT to say, but perhaps didn’t express exactly right. Geez. You are part of whats wrong with this country!
You too, Raymond Magno? Reading glasses, maybe?
It is only mentioned in the comments.
Thank you for showing the horrible conditions that these people work in. There are a lot of bad things about China.
But why would you say these things are bought for “white children”? It taints the purpose of the article.
What’s with all the people misreading, and obsesssing about something that’s not even in the article? It says “European and American” children, and in case you haven’t been to those places, they’re not all white – not by a long shot.
It is only mentioned in the comments. One of those comments is yours.
Great article! But must people just don’t care. Sad!
White kids are the majority of children in the countries where these products are sold, at least until 2050 or so. Are you all so fragile that you don’t recognize that? Tender white snowflakes indeed.
‘Mercury levels in the water and fish around factories are 280 times higher than national requirements.’ Who’s ‘national requirements’? The ‘white’ national requirements? China doesn’t have ‘national requirements’.Fake journalist are taking over the media and adding the national disgrace in with every ‘article’ and blaming fox for propaganda. Ten msm outlets to one ‘conservative’ and the one is propaganda?
I’m confused. I see nothing that says “white children”… the article repeatedly mentions European and American children and consumers but I don’t think that necessarily equates “white”. We are a disgusting consumer culture, acknowledge it. Change it. But don’t be so foolish to deny it.
Well seams the the factory’s are much better then they where health and safety wise then where 20 years ago. See some massive improvement in there housing and work hours as well. Or should we forget that the capitalism has mad China. 35-40 years ago China was so poor it couldn’t feed there own children and almost nothing was produced there. Today threw capitalism there the worlds largest exporter of goods. And they have advanced from America in the 1790 to America in the 1940s-50s. In 30-40 years of capitalism. If they keep going this way. Your talking China replacing the United States as the worlds freeist economy. Oh wait. They already have as they have no osha or EPA. The workers choose who they work for. If the company is unhealthy or unfair to them. They go work for someone that is not. So I see no reason to complain about any of it. Sure there not as advanced as the rest of the world yet. But there getting there faster then the rest of the world can think they could.
Wow this is incredible. This author wrote an article about these terrible conditions of women workers in China and people from Western countries are mad because she said the truth. These toys are for European and American kids and it revealed a lot by the people who red instead “white” … there is non white people in Europe and America and it’s time white people accept that.
Reality is always bitter and for the most people easy option is to ignore it or try to drag some totally irrelevant detail.
Till there is mindless consumerism and greed to hoard more for less, there will be oppression and exploitation.
“Little town in China called Yiwu”. Clearly, you have never been there. It is a modern city of more than 1.2 million people. I have been to about 15 factories there and never seen or heard about “sweatshops” ( I speak fluent Mandarin).
Re the Yiwu – Madrid rail line, it also,passes through Russia, Poland, Germany and France and the most commonly transported good are computers and motor vehicle parts.
Further, maybe you can list the downstream communities affected by the polluted water? Again, you need to know your facts before making emotion charged posts about something you only assume is occurring.
JL says that there are “a lot of bad things about China”. Like what? Every country in the world has good AND bad things. Maybe you should visit the country and see the Chinese work ethic and commitment to family that sadly lack in many western societies.
Bit of a distraction with the *white children* comments, not mentioned in the main text as far as I could see. White/black/brown/yellow/red,..the children getting the products,and their skin colour is rather secondary to the point that our western desire for irrelevant trinkets costs the health and well being of those whose labour is exploited to provide for that demand.