‘Low pay, long hours’: life inside factory that supplied Ivanka Trump brand in China

A worker with blood dripping from his head marked a low point in the tense, grinding life at a factory in southeast China used by Ivanka Trump and other fashion brands. An angry manager had hit him with the sharp end of a high-heeled shoe.

Workers from the factory, including one current and two former employees who spoke to The Associated Press, reported overtime that stretched past midnight, steep production quotas and crude verbal abuse at Ganzhou Huajian International Shoe City Co. They said beatings were not unheard of, but the shoe attack, which all three say they witnessed last year, was violent enough to stand out.

“He was bleeding right from the middle of the head,” the current worker said.

“There was a lot of blood. He went to the factory’s nurse station, passing by me,” said a second man, who said he quit his job at Huajian because of the long hours and low pay.

The three workers are the first people with direct knowledge of conditions at the Ganzhou factory to speak with the media. All three spoke on condition of anonymity, for fear of retribution or arrest.

Three men investigating conditions at the Huajian Group factory in Ganzhou were detained last month, accused of illegally using secret recording devices to steal commercial secrets. They, like one of the three men AP spoke with, worked with China Labour Watch, a New York non-profit organisation that has been investigating Ivanka Trump’s Chinese suppliers for more than a year.