Hyundai subsidiary used child labor at factory in Alabama

A Hyundai Motor subsidiary used child labor at a factory that supplies components for the South Korean company’s assembly line in Montgomery, Alabama, according to area police, with the families of three of the underage workers. and eight current and former factory employees.

The smaller workers, in some cases children as young as 12, recently worked at a metal stamping plant operated by SMART Alabama, the sources said.

SMART is mentioned by Hyundai in official documents as a subsidiary of which the South Korean group is a majority shareholder, and supplies components for some of the most popular models of cars and sport utility vehicles assembled by the company in Montgomery, the city that is home to its main factory. in the United States.

In a statement released this Friday (22), Hyundai said it does not tolerate illegal work practices in any of the company’s entities. “We have policies and procedures in place that require compliance with all local, state and federal laws,” he said. The company did not respond to detailed questions about the findings in this report.

SMART announced in a statement that it complies with federal, state and local laws and “denies any claim that it has deliberately employed any person ineligible to work.” The company said it relies on temp agencies to fill its vacancies, and that it expects “those agencies to follow the law in recruiting, hiring and placing workers in our facilities.”

SMART did not respond to specific questions about the workers named in this story, or about work situations described by them and others informed about the described factory.

Reuters was told that there were underage workers at Hyundai’s supplier company after the brief disappearance in February of a child from a Guatemalan immigrant family who went missing from his family’s home in Alabama.

The girl, who turns 14 this month, and her two brothers, ages 12 and 15, worked at the factory a few months ago and weren’t going to school, according to people briefed on their work situation. The children’s father, Pedro Tzi, confirmed these people’s account in an interview with Reuters.

Police in Enterprise, the city the Tzis immigrated to, also told Reuters that the girl and her brothers had worked at SMART. Police, who helped locate the girl when she disappeared, at that time identified her by her name in a public alert.

Reuters is not naming the teenager in this article because she is a minor.

The police force in Enterprise, a town about 70 kilometers from the Luverne factory, has no jurisdiction to investigate possible violations of labor laws at the factory. Police instead notified the state attorney general after the incident, Enterprise Police Detective James Sanders told Reuters.

Mike Lewis, a spokesman for the Alabama Secretary of State for Justice, declined to comment. It is unknown whether the department or other investigators have contacted Hyundai or SMART regarding possible violations.

Pedro Tzi’s children, who are now enrolled in school for the school year starting in September, were among the numerous underage workers who have found jobs at Hyundai’s component supplier in recent years, according to interviews with more than one dozens of current and former factory workers and human resources professionals.

Several of these minors, respondents said, had dropped out of school in order to work longer shifts at the factory, a sprawling facility that has a well-documented history of safety and health violations, including amputation risks.

Most of the current and former employees who spoke to Reuters did so on the condition that their names not be revealed. Reuters was unable to determine the exact number of children who worked at the SMART factory, what salary they received or what the other terms of their employment contracts were.

The revelation of the presence of child labor in Hyundai’s US supply chain could cause backlash from consumers and regulatory authorities, and damage the reputation of one of the most powerful and profitable automakers on the planet. In a statement about its “human rights policy” posted online, Hyundai said it prohibits child labor throughout its workforce, which includes its suppliers.

The company recently announced an expansion into the United States, and plans to invest more than $5 billion in various projects, including the construction of a new electric vehicle plant near Savannah, Georgia.

“Consumers should be outraged,” said David Michaels, a former US assistant secretary of labor at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), to whom Reuters shared its reporting findings.

“They need to see that these cars are being built, at least in part, by workers who are children and should be in school rather than risking their lives and health because their families are desperate for income,” he added.

At a time of labor shortages and disruption in US supply chains, labor experts told Reuters there is an increased risk that children, especially undocumented immigrants, will end up in illegal and dangerous workplaces for minors. .

In Enterprise, a hub in the poultry sector, Reuters reported a few months ago the plight of a Guatemalan minor who immigrated to the United States alone and found work in a chicken meat processing plant.

“Too young”

Federal and Alabama laws prohibit anyone under 18 from working in metal stamping and turning operations, such as SMART’s, where proximity to dangerous machinery could expose them to risk. Alabama law also requires all children age 17 and under to be enrolled in a school.

Michaels, who is now a professor at George Washington University, said safety at Hyundai’s American operations was a recurring concern at OSHA during his eight years at the helm of the agency, until his departure in 2017. Michaels visited South Korea in 2015 and said it had warned Hyundai executives that heavy demand for components under the “just in time” system was causing lapses in safety.

SMART’s factory produces parts for the popular Elantra, Sonata and Santa Fe models, vehicles that, until June, accounted for nearly 37% of Hyundai’s US sales, according to the company. She has been punished numerous times by OSHA for health and safety violations, according to US federal government records.

A study of these filings by Reuters shows that SMART has received at least $48,515 in fines from OSHA from 2013 onwards, the most recent of which this year. OSHA inspections of the company documented violations that included crushing and amputation hazards at its plant.

The plant, which according to its website has the capacity to supply components for up to 400,000 vehicles each year, is also struggling to retain staff and meet Hyundai’s demand.

In late 2020, SMART wrote a letter to US consular service officials in Mexico, requesting a visa for a Mexican worker. The letter, sent by Gary Sport, the plant’s general manager, stated that there was “a severe shortage of manpower at the plant” and that Hyundai “does not tolerate these deficiencies.”

SMART did not respond to Reuters questions about the letter.

A few months ago, lawyers filed a class-action lawsuit against SMART and several staffing agencies that help obtain US visas for workers. The lawsuit, filed with the US federal court in the northern district of Georgia, on behalf of about 40 Mexican workers, alleges that some workers, hired as engineers, were instead forced to perform manual labor.

SMART refuted the charges, calling them “baseless” and “unfounded” in court documents.

While staffing agencies help fill existing industrial vacancies in the United States, they are often criticized by worker advocates because their presence allows large employers to outsource the responsibility for verifying contractors’ eligibility for work.

A former SMART worker, an adult immigrant who left the company and went to work for another auto company last year, said there were about 50 underage workers on different shifts at the plant, adding that he knew some of them. in person. Another former adult SMART worker, a US citizen who left the company this year, said that on her shift she was accompanied by a dozen minors.

Another former employee, Tabatha Moultry, 39, worked on SMART’s assembly line for several years until 2019. Moultry said the factory’s staff turnover was very high and the company was increasingly reliant on migrant workers to meet the immense demand for production. She said she remembered working with an immigrant girl “who looked like she was 11 or 12 years old.”

The girl came to work with her mother, Moultry said. When Moultry asked her real age, the girl replied that she was 13 years old. “She was too young to work in that factory, or any factory,” said Moultry, who gave no further details about the girl; Reuters was unable to independently confirm her report.

Tzi, the father of the girl who disappeared from home for some time, contacted Enterprise police on February 3 because she had not returned home. Police issued an amber alert, a standard practice for US officials when they believe a minor is in danger.

Authorities began a search operation for Alvaro Cucul, 21, another Guatemalan immigrant and SMART worker, at that time because Tzi believed his daughter might be with him. Using cell phone tracking features, police located Cucul and the girl in a parking lot in Athens, Georgia.

The girl said that Cucul was her friend and that they had traveled there in search of new job opportunities. Cucul was detained and later deported, according to people familiar with his situation. He did not respond to a Reuters message seeking comment via Facebook.

After the disappearance generated local news coverage, SMART laid off several underage workers, according to two former employees and other locals familiar with the factory. The sources said the police attention raised fears that authorities might act to clamp down on the use of underage labor.

Tzi, the girl’s father, also worked for SMART and now survives doing odd jobs in the construction and lumber business. He told Reuters he was sorry his children had to work. The family needed all the income they could at the time, he said, but now they’re trying to move on.

“All that is behind us,” he said. “The children are no longer working, and when classes start they will be at school.”

Translation by Paulo Migliacci