Top Issue 1-2024

2 April 1998 Edition

Resize: A A A Print

Disney's less than perfect world

Entertainment giant runs Third World sweatshops



By Dara MacNeil

Forget the happy clappy characters, the goofy, zany antics and the sing-a-long tunes. Instead, when you think Disney, think greed. Or Greed.

Last year, Disney's Chief Executive Officer, Michael Eisner, estimated his services to the global media giant to be worth $575 million. A nicely rounded figure that.

Less rounded is the figure paid to sweatshop workers from Haiti to Burma, where the manufacture of Disney products will earn employees as little as six cents an hour.

Eisner's obscene remuneration package was made up of a $750,000 salary, a bonus of $9.9 million and stock options which were cashed in for a reward of $565 million.

Eisner has a bad track record in this regard. Between 1991-95, the Disney CEO awarded himself some $235 million. In 1988, Eisner broke existing corporate pay records - no mean feat - when he collected a $40 million pay packet.

Although an acknowledged trailblazer in this regard, Eisner is not alone in his displays of corporate greed. Since 1980, pay rates for US company chiefs have risen by 500%.

Meanwhile, the average earnings of shopfloor workers in the US - ie those that pay the wages of Mr Eisner and his ilk - have actually fallen over the same period.

In 1965, US corporate chiefs were veritable paragons of wage moderation, their pay rates a mere 44 times greater than that of the average shopfloor worker. In 1998, the Eisners of this world enjoy wage levels 200 times greater than their shopfloor workers.

But of course, that's only shopfloor workers in the wealthy Western world. The pay differential enters the level of obscure, Einstein-like calculation when it concerns the Eisner Gang and their growing, contracted workforce in the Third World.

It is worth noting, that as these displays of corporate greed have become commonplace, as the profits of the corporations have spiralled, so has the 'outsourcing' of corporate manufacturing to impoverished, Third World nations. The corporations would have us believe it's all to do with aiding the developing world.

In 1997, the Asia Monitor Resource Centre issued a report on the operations of a toy factory, based in Vietnam. The factory specialised in the manufacture of the Disney 'figures' which are given away with McDonalds inappropriately-titled Happy Meals.

The 1000 workers employed in the factory earned from six to eight cents an hour. In Vietnam, a basic living wage is estimated at 32 cents an hour. Overtime was compulsory, with 9-10 hour shifts required seven days a week.

In February 1997, some 200 workers were made ill as a result of prolonged exposure to toxic solvents. Annually, the young workforce - more pliable, cheaper too - earns an average of $250 each. The Eisner Gang would probably blow that amount on pre-Happy Meal cocktails.

Oh, by the way, the Communist Manifesto is 150 years old this year. Remarkably sprightly for its age, don't you think.


US's politica    l prisoners



Locking up political prisoners is something that happens elsewhere. Political prisoners, the story goes, do not exist in the West. There are mean, nasty, depraved criminals, but political prisoners....try Cuba, China, anywhere that happens to be out of favour with the West.

All of which makes Jericho '98 a little embarassing. Jericho '98 is the name given to a campaign organised by NGOs in the US, that demands the release of all political prisoners held in US jails.

Even more embarassing is the fact that Jericho '98 has the support of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

On 27 March Jericho '98 led a march in Washington in support of its campaign. Herman Ferguson, the head of Jericho '98 accused successive US administrations of utter hypocrisy. While prepared to vociferously condemn others, the US officially refuses to admit that its (growing) prison population actually contains those that might be at odds politically with the US establishment.

For its part, Jericho '98 estimates that there are some 150 political prisoners currently incarcerated in the US.

They include members and ex-members of the radical Black Panther Party (those that weren't already shot dead, that is), members of the Puerto Rican independence movement, and those demanding autonomy/independence for North America's indigenous peoples.

Jericho '98 estimates there are at least 30 members of the Puerto Rican independence movement incarcerated, members both of the Macheteros and the Armed Forces of National Liberation.

Also included is Mumia-Abu Jamal, a former Black Panther and current member of the MOVE organisation. Jamal is in jail on a trumped up charge of murdering a police officer in his native Philadelphia. Only intense international publicity and pressure saved him from the execution chamber in 1995. Key prosecution witnesses have admitted they lied under oath, as a result of police pressure. The threat of execution still hangs over Jamal.

Do the names Sacco and Vanzetti, or Joe Hill ring a bell? George Jackson, perhaps?

In 1997, US attorney general Janet Reno declined to meet with a UN Human Rights official investigating violations of human rights in US jails.

A new role for Israeli army?


It appears Israel's much-publicised plan for a withdrawal from South Lebanon, in belated compliance with a 20 year old UN resolution, has run into difficulties. Apparently, neither Lebanon or Syria is prepared to accede to Israeli demands that they ``guarantee the security'' of the country's northern border. Don't mean to be pedantic, but isn't that what the Israeli army is for?

An Phoblacht
44 Parnell Sq.
Dublin 1
Ireland