According to the Finnwatch report, workers at the plant manufacturing books for sale in Finland earn about one euro per hour. The account published on Tuesday claimed that the plant owners squeeze as much as 80 hours overtime work out of workers each month.
“It’s not possible to maintain a family on the factory wage of about one euro an hour,” Finnwatch chief executive Sonja Vartiala said in a statement Tuesday.
Finnwatch investigated working conditions at a factory owned by the Hung Hing group in Guangdong province in China. The books are sold in Finland by companies such as Bonnier Books Finland, Egmont Publishing, Karisto and Mäkelä Publishing, and include children’s books.
The NGO said that some of the Finnish publishers have run due diligence tests on the factory but the organisation said that their systems of accountability are weak.
Finnwatch also reviewed the accountability policies of the Finnish publishers and found that some had no policies at all, while others only had accountability requirements for some of their products.
Finnish publishers Tammi and WSOY – members of the Egmont and Bonnier groups respectively - performed best in the comparison.
According to Finnwatch some five percent of the books brought into Finland come from China, but when it comes to children’s books, that proportion is higher, particularly in the case of interactive or activity-based books.