At least four major suppliers from Hyundai Motor Co and sister Kia Corp have hired young people at Alabama plants in recent years, according to a Reuters investigation, and state and federal agencies are investigating whether young people have worked at part of a dozen other brands around the world. The supply chain of automakers in the southern U. S. stateU. S. At a plant owned by Hwashin America Corp, a supplier to both car brands in the southern Alabama city of Greenville, a 14-year-old Guatemalan woman was working assembling frame parts in May. According to interviews with his father and law enforcement officials.
At factories owned by Korean auto parts maker Ajin Industrial Co in the eastern Alabama city of Cusseta, a former production engineer told Reuters he worked with at least 10 miners. And six other former Ajin employees said they also worked with several miners. In statements sent through the same public relations firm, Hwashin and Ajin said their policies prohibit hiring any employees under the legal age to work. Using language, the two corporations said that, “as far as we know,” they had not hired underage employees.
The employment of children in Hwashin and Ajin has not been previously reported. The news follows a Reuters report in July that revealed the use of child workers, one of whom was just 12, through SMART Alabama LLC, a subsidiary of Hyundai in the south. City of Luverne, Alabama. In August, the U. S. Department of Labor said the U. S. Department of Labor. The U. S. Department of Health and Drug Administration said SL Alabama LLC, another Hyundai supplier and a unit of South Korea’s SL Corp, hired underage workers, and added a 13-year-old boy, at its Alexander City plant.
Since then, as many as 10 Alabama plants that supply parts to Hyundai or Kia have been investigated for children’s hard labor through state and federal regulatory or law enforcement agencies, according to two other people familiar with the investigations. Surveys are conducted in small towns and rural outposts where there are many task providers and recruiters employing them. It is not yet clear whether the investigations will result in thief charges, fines or other penalties, the other two people said.
On Aug. 22, a team of inspectors from the Alabama Department of Labor and State arrived at one of Ajin’s plants, according to other people familiar with the operation. When the team arrived, staff ran back and left the scene before they could only be questioned, one of the inspectors said at an Alabama anti-trafficking task force assembly last month, according to two other people present. The inspection has not been previously reported.
A spokesman for the hard work department, Eric Lucero, told Reuters that the agency’s wage and hour department had an open investigation into Ajin, but declined to verify whether the investigation is similar to the children’s hard work. cooperate” with any investigation through regulators and law enforcement.
Hyundai, in a statement, told Reuters it “does not condone or tolerate violations of the hard work law” and demands that “our suppliers and business partners strictly comply with the law. “Kia, for its part, said it “strongly condemns any child work practices and does not tolerate any illegal or unethical practices internally or within our business partners and suppliers. “Hyundai and Kia, South Korea’s two largest automakers, are sister corporations controlled through parent company Hyundai Motor Group. were reviewing the procurement practices used through their suppliers.
The discovery of children’s hard work at other plants in Hyundai’s supply chain in the U. S. The U. S. could deal another blow to the reputation of a company whose immediate expansion and popularity in recent years has led it to be the third-largest selling automaker in the U. S. U. S. Previous reports on kid hard work have drawn the attention of law enforcement authorities and regulations to the company’s ability to uphold its own professed moral standards and meet basic standards on hard work in the United States.
Internal human rights policies, published through any of the online brands, prohibit child labor in Hyundai and Kia’s services, as well as in their suppliers. Alabama and U. S. legislation The U. S. Department of Homeland Security limits factory paints to anyone under the age of 16 and all personnel under the age of 18. They are prohibited from doing many dangerous jobs in car factories, where steel presses, cutting machines and high-speed forklifts can be life-threatening. After the earlier Reuters report on children’s hard work at suppliers SMART and SL, Hyundai’s lead chief operating officer, Jose Munoz, said the news firm had ordered the automaker’s purchasing arm to halt all activities with suppliers mentioned in the reports “as soon as possible. “He also said the company would investigate all suppliers at Hyundai’s Alabama operations.
Hyundai, Muñoz added, would seek to end the use of third-party recruitment agencies that many of its suppliers have relied on to monitor and hire workers. Hyundai is now moving away from Muñoz’s comments.
In a recent statement to Reuters, Hyundai said it had cancelled plans to eliminate suppliers where minors worked. Two of its suppliers, SMART and SL, have taken “corrective action” to fire recruitment agencies they considered problematic, he said. The role” that portion brands play in many small Alabama towns, Hyundai added, “additional oversight is a better solution right now than cutting ties with those suppliers. “
Hyundai declined to hire chief operating officer Muñoz for a follow-up interview. The use of third-party recruitment agencies is not an unusual practice among brands and other labor-intensive industries in the United States. The tactic has long been criticized by union activists. for giving factory owners and other employers the ability to outsource the task of selecting, hiring, and meeting the standards of their workforce.
Earlier this year, Reuters showed how employment agencies in rural Alabama were recruiting undocumented staff from Central America, adding minors who had entered the United States without parents or guardians and sending them to poultry processing plants. As with those minors, at least some of the young people working at Hyundai’s suppliers used false identities and documents received through black market intermediaries, with the help of the recruitment companies themselves.
To perceive how children’s hard work has become ingrained in the supply chain of one of the world’s most successful automakers and in the hard work market of the world’s richest country, Reuters surveyed more than a hundred existing and former factory employees and executives, the hard work recruiters, state and federal officials, and others. The reporters spent weeks at auto parts plants in rural Alabama and reviewed thousands of pages of court records, corporate documents, police reports and other documents.
“It’s shocking,” David Weil, a former administrator of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, said of the symptoms of widespread hard work by children in factories. Throughout Alabama, there is an interconnected and expanding network of providers and employment agencies, many of which are Korean-owned, to service Hyundai brands. Hyundai operates a meeting plant in Montgomery, the state capital. West Point, Georgia.
Both states, so-called “right to work” jurisdictions whose legislation consistent with allowing staff to reject unions and thereby undermine the concerted labor force, have attracted automakers and follow-up investments this year alone, granting them billions of dollars in tax breaks. and other incentives along the way. A key component of Hyundai’s supply network is its ability to ensure just-in-time delivery of components, a staple of fashion production aimed at minimizing irregular inventories. It can fine suppliers, often thousands of dollars per minute, for any delays, according to others familiar with its inconsistent conditions.
Tension to deliver, several painters from existing and former suppliers told Reuters, has intensified in recent years due to hard work and a shortage of fountains that have crippled brands over the COVID-19 pandemic. The greater the chances are that employers will take shortcuts to maintain staffed meeting lines, whether painters are legally allowed to paint or not.
“It turns out the level was set for this to happen,” said Terri Gerstein, director of national and local compliance assignment in Harvard Law School’s Work and Work Life program. “Factories in remote rural areas. A region with low union density Use of employment agencies “The shortage of labor in production and the low wages presented through some factories and agents for jobs in factories attract enthusiastic applicants, especially undocumented immigrants and miners, to the maximum.
“When you have staff who are desperately looking for work and they’re not self-sufficient and you have a lot of competition, you see a race to the bottom,” said Jordan Barab, former deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Occupational Safety and Health. Health Administration. , the federal labor regulator. So far, SL, the manufacturer of Alexander City, in central Alabama, is the only Hyundai or Kia supplier accused of violating child hard labor laws. thirteen and 16 at the SL plant, according to other people familiar with the operation and government documents.
The U. S. Department of Labor, in a court filing, said SL Alabama had “repeatedly violated” the law “by employing oppressive hard labor for children. “He fined the company approximately $30,000. The Alabama Department of Labor fined SL and one of its recruitment agencies a total of approximately $36,000. SL told Reuters in October that it was cooperating with investigators and auditing their employment policies. fired the president of the Alexander City SL plant. The plant’s former president may not be reached for comment.
Among the foundlings working at the plant, Reuters learned, were two Guatemalan brothers, aged 13 and 15, who were detained by federal authorities. Furnished space owned by the president of the recruiting firm that hired them, according to asset records, family circle members and a former colleague interviewed at the Alabama home.
A teenage cousin who worked at the factory with the brothers said no one at SL had ever verified the age of the workers. “They didn’t ask any questions,” the cousin said. Reuters is not calling the cousin or the other minors and undocumented immigrants interviewed for this story, however they have provided their identities and local employment histories to authorities.
Since the first Reuters report on the hard work of children in Hyundai’s supply chain, recruitment companies have laid off foreign staff from at least five factories, said existing and former staff, especially those who gave the impression of being too young to work legally in the factories. The dismissals complicate the authorities’ investigation, officials said, as staff may have been operating under pseudonyms and some moved in after being fired.
Hyundai opened its large vehicle meeting plant in December 2005. The Georgia Kia plant, a hundred miles to the east, opened five years later. To help both brands, many of Hyundai’s Korean suppliers have established themselves in the region, building factories that have boosted local economies. Hyundai and Kia now have dozens of suppliers in Alabama, according to the Alabama Economic Development Association, a business organization. Authorities first heard about the hard work of children at car suppliers in early 2021.
A school official in rural Butler County, Alabama, told state officials that some youths, including at least one immigrant female in her late 12s, gave the impression they were painting at Hwashin, the Greenville portion maker. The automobile manufacturer, which manufactures steel frame portions in a factory. the length of 4 football fields, it is now the largest employer in a city once the most productive known for growing cotton. After the complaint, officials familiar with the case told Reuters they had begun examining Hwashin. The informer and the officials spoke on the condition that he not be known by summons or by agency.
Even as the government investigated, a 14-year-old migrant was recruited at the Hhin factory. The girl’s father said he and his daughter arrived in Alabama 4 years earlier after a long adventure from Guatemala. The teenager looks younger than her age. During a stopover at her home, a small space shared with other migrants south of Greenville, Reuters met the girl, who is just over 4’4″ tall with rosy cheeks and a sheepish smile.
Earlier this year, the father was engaged in poultry farming. Worried about the family circle’s meagre source of income and hoping to send cash to her circle of relatives in Central America, the girl, who was not going to school, asked her father if she, too, can find a job, she said. He agreed. ” I wish I had said no,” he said.
In April, the father turned to a Spanish-speaking recruiter looking for workers. The recruiter, the father said, worked for a company he knew as JSS, a familiar domain call as a recruiting firm for Hyundai suppliers. Reuters simply cannot succeed in recruiting. As with many contracting agencies, JSS’s proprietary design is not entirely transparent in the public record. A review of more than two dozen hard-working agents revealed a complex web of overlapping businesses that are temporarily formed and dissolved to serve Hyundai’s suppliers.
Two other people, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters they had worked as recruiters for JSS. The agency, they said, hired underage staff while they worked there. Executive Jae Kim occasionally worked there. In October, Reuters visited the workplace, located in a shopping mall. Inside, papers and logos of various agencies, adding “JSS Staffing,” were on desks. Javier Martinez, an employee, showed in a brief interview that the workplace is run by a businessman named Jae Kim. He said Kim was not there that day.
On LinkedIn, Jae Kim is listed as the managing director of a recruiting corporation called Advanced Job Solutions LLC, or AJS. Kim did not respond to interview requests. In Greenville, 3 miles from Hhin’s factory, a JSS Staffing store advertised jobs this month in a giant window in Spanish and English. “We are hiring!” the sign says “WE BAUCH”. An asset manager at the site said the workplace was leased to a company known as Job Supply System LLC.
In a phone call to Greenville’s office, an aide referred Reuters to Martinez, the worker in Kim’s office. Martinez told Reuters via email that he was responding on behalf of Job Supply Systems Alabama LLC, or JSSA, a slight variation of the call from the company renting the Greenville office. Despite the overlap, the companies are other entities, Martinez wrote. Reuters may simply not find out whether the agencies shared ownership, control design or any common story.
“JSSA is not affiliated with or involved in the control or operations” of Job Supply System, Martinez wrote. He added, aware of ongoing investigations into the children’s hard work and “complied with investigators’ requests. “When the Guatemalan girl’s father contacted the recruiter, he said he asked if his daughter’s age would be an issue. No, the recruiter told him. On the black market, the girl’s father received a fake ID card, noted through Reuters, indicating she is an 18-year-old California resident. The call and photo on the card are those of the girl, but the year of birth is fake.
In May, the father said, he and his daughter were running in Hwashin, and each earned about $11 an hour. That’s more than the federal minimum wage of $7. 25; Alabama does not impose a state minimum. But the rate is lower than what many other commercial jobs pay in the region, adding poultry processors, where staff earn at least $14 an hour. salary, the father said. Many recruitment agencies operate with fleets of vans and provide transportation to the companies for which they hire labour.
Shortly after father and daughter started, rumors circulated among factory staff that the government was making plans to crack down on migrant child labor. It is not known what caused the rumors. But months earlier, another young woman from Guatemala, who worked at SMART, Hyundai’s supplier near the city of Luverne, briefly disappeared along with an adult colleague. The woman’s case is detailed in Reuters’ first report on child labor at Hyundai suppliers.
In May, the father, daughter and other miners working in Hwashin said they were ruled out through the recruitment agency. “You have to go,” he said, the recruiter told his daughter and other fired miners. “The government will get here. ” The father said he also left Hwashin in early June. At the time, investigators had not come forward. Reuters may simply not find out if the government has visited the plant since. Hwashin said he was not aware of any investigations into his painting practices and would cooperate with any investigation.
“IT WAS OBVIOUS THERE WERE MINORS” Some adult employees in Hyundai’s supply chain in Alabama told Reuters they knew or suspected children were running alongside them, but feared that increasing the factor would cost them their jobs.
Raul Roa, a 27-year-old Mexican production engineer, arrived in the eastern Alabama city of Cusseta in 2020 to paint at Ajin, one of two steel stamping plants owned by Korea’s parent company of the same name. Roa said Ajin, working with a recruitment company, was given a TN visa. The visa, a type of access permit allowed through an industry agreement with Mexico and Canada, allows highly professional professionals from those countries to work in the United States. Roa is among many Mexican professionals hired through Hyundai suppliers in recent years, according to interviews, court records and corporate documents reviewed through Reuters.
Soon after his arrival, Roa said, he began to notice a significant increase in the number of locally recruited migrant staff. Among them, he suspected, were minors. Over time, some of the young staff were made known. At least 10 told him they were minors, he said, as high as 15 or 16. a task outside the automotive industry. ” This is my first assignment in the US. And it’s not what you’d expect to see here. “
Six other former employees told Reuters they too had noticed underage staff at Ajin’s two factories in Cusseta. All six spoke on condition of anonymity. One of the six former employees, an American manager at one of Ajin’s factories, told Reuters he alerted his superiors last year about staff who appeared to be minors. One factory manager, he said, downplayed his considerations and pleaded with him to “concentrate on production. “
Reuters may simply not succeed in the unbelievable. Ajin declined to comment on the director’s claim that an astonishing man had ignored his concerns. At SMART, Carlos Herrera, a 29-year-old production engineer, said he heard a message.
Like Ajin worker Roa, Herrera said he recruited through SMART directly from Mexico on a TN visa. After starting at SMART in October 2020, Herrera said he saw at least 20 children and young women running around at the plant, many from Guatemala. He said some of the children told him they were between 12 and 16 years old. They worked under false names, Herrera said, and did the same jobs as adults, some even driving forklifts and operating welding equipment.
In January, Herrera said, he saw a 16-year-old forklift driver twist his hand after a fall. Another teenager, he said, also fell at the time and hurt his elbow. Herrera said he had raised considerations about underage personnel with SMART officials, however, had been sidelined. “I would tell them: this user wouldn’t be working,” he said. “But they didn’t care. “
SMART, in a statement provided by the same PR corporation hired through the other portion manufacturers, said it severed ties with a recruitment firm that had provided it with an underage worker. He said he was “not aware of any evidence” that any other company had provided “a worker who was not of legal running age. “SMART did not respond to questions about the injuries Herrera said he saw miners at his plant. SMART manufactures in-house factors for popular Hyundai models, adding Santa Fe and Elantra, and is majority-owned through the automaker.
Herrera has continually said he saw Hyundai’s staff corps make a stop at the plant. Other former SMART employees also told Reuters that Hyundai officials made a stop at the plant. Herrera said. ” I don’t know if they were paying attention to people’s faces,” he said, “but you could tell there were minors. “Hyundai did not respond to questions about the company’s scale at SMART or whether its officials saw underage staff there.
Herrera left SMART earlier this year and is in the process of joining a lawsuit filed by an organization of TN visa holders opposing the company and several contracting firms. Staff allege that SMART and its recruitment agencies recruited them to work as engineers. , however, he assigned them to the memory painting meeting at the plant. In court documents, SMART called the lawsuit baseless. After Reuters documented the disappearance of the woman painting at SMART, a state and federal government team conducted the Aug. 9 inspection in SL. They found seven miners, adding the two Guatemalan brothers, among the personnel who made headlights and mirrors for Hyundai and Kia. The Alabama Department of Labor fined SL and JK USA Inc. , an employment agency, $17,800.
A state sanction letter opposing JK is addressed to a senior executive of the recruitment agency: “Sam Hong – President. “Alabama asset records show that the space where the two brothers lived with other SL personnel is owned by a company registered in Sam Nombre de Hong. In an email this week, Hong said JK was conducting an “internal investigation. “He declined to answer detailed questions about the company’s sanctions and hiring practices.
On a Tuesday afternoon in October, Christi Richardson, known on JK’s online page as manager of the company’s Alexander City branch, packs boxes at the workplace, located in a small space with a red door. She told Reuters she finished the workplace and refused. to comment more. JK’s online page is no longer online. A 4-minute drive away, Reuters visited a dilapidated gray space where the Guatemalan brothers lived earlier this year. Blue blouse with JK’s logo, the man, also Guatemalan, said he no longer worked at SL.
The day after the children were found at the factory, he said, SL officials asked all remaining staff to provide valid documents. He didn’t have the right documents, he said, but soon discovered a job at another nearby car factory. In a statement provided through the same public relations agency, SL told Reuters it had ended its relationship with JK. The recruitment agency, he added, provided underage staff without SL’s knowledge, without “knowledge or consent. “
The two Guatemalan brothers crossed the U. S. southern border. He was working in the U. S. government alone last year, said a circle of family members and an official familiar with their access. They are now in a Kansas shelter run by the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, according to government documents and interviews with family circle members. The company, which is part of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services. In the U. S. , it houses unaccompanied children after they enter the United States. A spokesman said the company may not comment on cases involving immigrant minors.
Among the issues state and federal investigators are investigating lately is whether young people who worked at Hyundai’s suppliers could have entered through human trafficking rings, said three other people familiar with the investigations. “The child is part of a child’s hard work. “traffic case,” read the notes reviewed through Reuters from the ORR files of one of the brothers. In the notes, the government wrote that the youths described “the exploitation of debt bondage (repayment of contraband debts). “They added that an anonymous “third-component hard work company” had tricked the young people into believing it could deport them from the United States.
“Some young people have expressed concern about being deported because of comments made to them by corporate officials,” the notes said. (Additional reporting via Hyunjoo Jin in San Francisco and Heekyong Yang in Seoul. Edited by Paulo Prada).
(This story was not edited by the Devdiscourse team and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed. )