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Manufacturer The Kardashians Used Paid Workers 8 Cents Per Shirt: Report

By:Radar Staff

Dec. 21 2011, Published 6:00 a.m. ET

By RadarOnline.com Staff

A clothing manufacturer once used by the Kardashians to produce one of their branded lines paid its Chinese workers a paltry 8 cents per garment, an investigation by a leading human rights advocacy group uncovered.

The allegations about Kardashian products in this post have nothing to do with their products sold at Sears.

China Labor Watch, a nonprofit organization fighting sweatshops in the Communist regime, released the startling findings of their probe, titled 'Investigation of China’s Clothing and Apparel Industry: Excessive Overtime, Student Workers and Exploitative Wage Systems' -- which you can read here.

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The investigation into Bebe, who the Kardashians used to manufacture a branded clothing line, handbags and jewelry with in 2010 -- ran from July to August, this year.

Despite the Kardashians' denials that factories they've used are "strictly policed" and there are no human rights violations, the organization found workers -- predominately students -- were paid based on a piece-rate wage system.

At the company's Zhejiang Cathaya Clothing Factory, investigators posing undercover as factory workers uncovered that staff were required to iron a total of 1,600 t-shirts each day, with each laborer having to iron between 270 and 400 pieces of clothes.

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That amounts to about $21 per day.

And according to China Labor Watch, staff were routinely working 12 hours a day and six days a week.

That equates to $1.75 per hour.

According to the findings, violations at the factory include:

* The piece-rate wage system employed at the factory all but requires workers to work ‘overtime’ to support themselves.

* This system does not even provide extra pay per unit made during overtime hours, which would seem to be in clear violation of labor laws.