The California state Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE) announced yesterday that the Walt Disney Company paid over $900,000 in back-pay to 800 employees who made less than minimum wage assembling toys for a manufacturer under contract to Disney Stores. The Disney Company was cleared of all wrongdoing by the DLSE, and cooperated with the investigation from the beginning---pulling all the illegally produced items from their shelves and halting further orders. The contractor KTBA Inc., however, was found to have violated minimum-wage, overtime, industrial home-work and child-labor laws, paying workers $1.35 an hour to assemble pink tiaras and magic wands in their homes.
See "Disney Settles Back Wages Case", JAMES S. GRANELLI, Los Angeles Times, December 13, 2001