Human rights group eyes Kardashian factories

The head of a human-rights group says it is investigating whether some Kardashian-label apparel is manufactured in Chinese factories where worker abuses occur.

Charles Kernaghan, executive director of the Pittsburgh-based Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, told Newsday, "We are in the process of confirming the specific factories" where the K-Dash by Kardashian, Kris Jenner Kollection and ShoeDazzle lines are manufactured in the Guangdong region of China. None of the family's Sears products is under investigation.

Kernaghan told Star Magazine, which Wednesday published an article detailing its own independent investigation, that factories in the region are "like minimum-security prisons."

As rights groups and documentary filmmakers have repeatedly reported, workers typically toil 12-hour days, six to seven days a week, in non-air-conditioned plants where temperatures can reach over 100 degrees. They live in dormitories that are often infested, cannot speak or stand up to stretch during working hours, and require permission to use the toilet, where they are timed. Child labor is not uncommon.

"We're not stepping back from our statements in the Star, which is that factory conditions in that region are horrific," Kernaghan told Newsday. "If the conditions the Star described are not the case with the Kardashian factories, it would be one in a million."

Star Magazine's story, which claimed unequivocally that these specific Kardashian lines are produced in sweatshops, "is not true," the Kardashians' spokeswoman, Jill Fritzo, told E! News.

Lawyer-entrepreneur Robert Shapiro, a partner in ShoeDazzle with Kim Kardashian and others, told TMZ there is no child labor in any factory that ShoeDazzle uses. Chief operating officer Deborah Benton told the site, "Factories are routinely inspected and always pass inspection."

SEE PHOTOSKourtney Kardashian photos

Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner told TMZ that the factories the family uses are "strictly policed" against child labor and human-rights violations.

Kernaghan responded to these statements by telling Star, "If they are proud of these factories and they respect human rights, then why don't they provide a list of the factories and their addresses to the American people?"

The institute, which uncovered sweatshop conditions behind Kathie Lee Gifford products in the 1990s, this week issued a 40-page report detailing that Hasbro's Transformers toys are produced in similar factories.