LUVERNE, Ala., July 22 (Reuters) – A subsidiary of Hyundai Motor Co has used child labor at a plant that supplies parts for the Korean automaker’s assembly line in nearby Montgomery, Alabama, according to police in the area, the family of three underage workers. and eight former and current factory employees.
The underage workers, in some cases as young as 12, recently worked at a metal stamping plant operated by SMART Alabama LLC, these people said. SMART, listed by Hyundai in corporate filings as a majority-owned unit, supplies parts for some of the most popular cars and SUVs built by the automaker at Montgomery, its flagship U.S. assembly plant.
Hyundai ( 005380.KS ) did not respond to phone calls or emails from Reuters seeking comment.
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SMART, in a statement, said it follows federal, state and local laws and “denies any allegation that it employed anyone who is not eligible for employment.” The company said it relies on temporary employment agencies to fill jobs and expects “such agencies to follow the law in recruiting, hiring and placing workers at their facilities.”
SMART did not respond to specific questions about the workers quoted in this story or the work scenes they and others familiar with the factory described.
Reuters learned of underage workers at the Hyundai-owned supplier after the brief disappearance in February of a Guatemalan migrant boy 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 plant earlier this year and did not attend school, according to people familiar with their work. His father, Pedro Tzi, confirmed the account of these people in an interview with Reuters.
Police in the Tzi family’s adopted hometown of Enterprise also told Reuters that the girl and her siblings had worked at SMART. The police, who helped locate the missing girl, at the time of the search identified her by name in a public alert.
Reuters is not using his name in this article because he is a minor.
The police force at Enterprise, about 45 miles from the Luverne plant, does not have jurisdiction to investigate possible labor law violations at the plant. Instead, the force notified the state attorney general’s office after the incident, James Sanders, a company police detective, told Reuters.
Mike Lewis, a spokesman for the Alabama attorney general’s office, declined to comment. It’s unclear whether the bureau or other investigators have contacted SMART or Hyundai about possible violations.
Pedro Tzi’s children, now enrolled for the next school term, were among a larger cohort of underage workers who found work at the Hyundai-owned supplier in recent years, according to interviews with a dozen of previous and current employees and workers of the plant. recruiters
Several of those minors, they said, have given up schooling to work long shifts at the plant, a sprawling facility with a documented history of health and safety violations, including amputation risks.
Most of the current and former employees who spoke to Reuters did so on condition of anonymity. Reuters was unable to determine the exact number of children who may have worked at the SMART factory, what the children were paid or other working conditions.
The revelation of child labor in Hyundai’s U.S. supply chain could lead to a backlash from consumers, regulations and the reputation of one of the world’s most powerful and profitable automakers. In a “human rights policy” posted online, Hyundai says it prohibits child labor across its entire workforce, including suppliers.
The company recently said it will expand in the United States, planning more than $5 billion in investments, including a new electric vehicle factory near Savannah, Georgia.
“Consumers should be outraged,” said David Michaels, the former US assistant secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, with whom Reuters shared the findings of its reports.
“They should know that these cars are built, at least in part, by workers who are children and need to go to school instead of putting their lives in danger because their families are desperate for income,” he added.
At a time of U.S. labor shortages and supply chain disruptions, labor experts told Reuters there is a greater risk of children, especially undocumented immigrants, ending up in jobs dangerous and illegal for minors.
In Enterprise, home to a bustling poultry industry, Reuters earlier this year chronicled how a Guatemalan minor who immigrated to the United States alone found work at a local chicken processing plant. Read more.
“TOO YOUNG”
Federal and Alabama laws limit minors under the age of 18 from working in metal stamping and pressing operations like SMART, where proximity to dangerous machinery can put them at risk. Alabama law also requires that children 17 and younger be enrolled in school.
Michaels, who is now a professor at George Washington University, said the safety of Hyundai’s U.S.-based suppliers was a recurring concern at OSHA during the eight years he led the agency until he left in 2017. Michaels visited Korea in 2015 and said he warned Hyundai. executives that their high demand for “just-in-time” parts was causing safety failures.
The SMART plant builds parts for the popular Elantra, Sonata and Santa Fe models, vehicles that as of June accounted for nearly 37 percent of Hyundai’s U.S. sales, according to the automaker. The factory has received repeated OSHA penalties for health and safety violations, federal records show.
A Reuters review of records shows SMART has been assessed at least $48,515 in OSHA penalties since 2013, and was fined last year. OSHA inspections at SMART have documented violations, including crush and amputation hazards at the factory.
The plant, whose website says it has the capacity to supply parts for up to 400,000 vehicles each year, has also struggled to retain labor to keep up with Hyundai’s demand.
In late 2020, SMART wrote a letter to US consular officials in Mexico requesting a visa for a Mexican worker. The letter, written by SMART CEO Gary Sport and reviewed by Reuters, said the plant was “severely understaffed” and that Hyundai “will not tolerate such shortages.”
SMART did not respond to questions from Reuters about the letter.
Earlier this year, lawyers filed a class-action lawsuit against SMART and several staffing companies that help supply workers with US visas. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia on behalf of a group of about 40 Mexican workers, alleges that some employees, hired as engineers, were ordered to do jobs minors
SMART in court documents called the allegations in the lawsuit “baseless” and “unfair.”
Many of the minors at the plant were hired through recruitment agencies, according to current and former SMART workers and local labor recruiters.
While staffing firms help fill industrial jobs across the country, they have often been criticized by labor advocates for allowing large employers to outsource the responsibility of vetting employees for work eligibility.
A former SMART worker, an adult migrant who left for another job in the auto industry last year, said there were about 50 underage workers between shifts at the plant, and added that he knew some of them personally. Another former adult SMART worker, an American citizen who also left the plant last year, said she worked alongside a dozen minors on her shift.
Another former employee, Tabatha Moultry, 39, worked on SMART’s assembly line for several years until 2019. Moultry said the plant had high turnover and increasingly relied on migrant workers to maintain keep up with the intense production demands. He said he remembered working with a migrant girl who “looked 11 or 12 years old”.
The girl would come to work with her mother, Moultry said. When Moultry asked about her real age, the girl said she was 13. “I was too young to work in this plant or any other plant,” Moultry said. Moultry did not provide further details about the girl, and Reuters could not independently confirm her account.
Tzi, the father of the missing girl, contacted Enterprise police on February 3, after she did not return home. Police issued an Amber Alert, a public warning when law enforcement believes a child is in danger.
They also launched a manhunt for 21-year-old Alvaro Cucul, another Guatemalan migrant and SMART worker at the time who Tzi believed she might be with. Using cell phone geolocation data, police located Cucul and the girl in a parking lot in Athens, Georgia.
The girl told the officers that Cucul was a friend and that they had moved there to look for other job opportunities. Cucul was arrested and later deported, according to people familiar with his deportation. Cucul did not respond to a Facebook message from Reuters seeking comment.
After the disappearance drew local news coverage, SMART fired a number of underage workers, according to two former employees and other locals familiar with the plant. Sources said the police attention raised fears that authorities could soon crack down on other underage workers.
Tzi, the father, also once worked at SMART and now works odd jobs in the construction and forestry industries. She told Reuters she was sorry her children had gone to work. The family needed whatever income they could get at the time, he added, but is now trying to move on.
“It’s all over now,” he said. “The children don’t work and in the fall they will be at school.”
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Editing by Paulo Prada
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