By Joshua Schneyer, Mica Rosenberg, Kristina Cooke<\/p>\n\n\n\n
July 22, 2022 (reuters.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
LUVERNE, Alabama (Reuters) -A subsidiary of Hyundai Motor Co has used child labor at a plant that supplies parts for the Korean carmaker\u2019s assembly line in nearby Montgomery, Alabama, according to area police, the family of three underage workers, and eight former and current employees of the factory.A Hyundai auto plant is seen from inside a Greyhound bus outside of Montgomery, Alabama, U.S., August 13, 2008. REUTERS\/Shannon Stapleton<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Underage workers, in some cases as young as 12, have 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 in Montgomery, its flagship U.S. assembly plant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a statement sent after Reuters first published its findings on Friday, Hyundai said it \u201cdoes not tolerate illegal employment practices at any Hyundai entity. We have policies and procedures in place that require compliance with all local, state and federal laws.\u201d It didn\u2019t answer detailed questions from Reuters about the findings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SMART, in a separate statement, said it follows federal, state and local laws and \u201cdenies any allegation that it knowingly employed anyone who is ineligible for employment.\u201d The company said it relies on temporary work agencies to fill jobs and expects \u201cthese agencies to follow the law in recruiting, hiring, and placing workers on its premises.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SMART didn\u2019t answer specific questions about the workers cited in this story or on-the-job scenes they and other people familiar with the factory described.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reuters learned of underage workers at the Hyundai-owned supplier following the brief disappearance in February of a Guatemalan migrant child from her family\u2019s home in Alabama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The girl, who turns 14 this month, and her two brothers, aged 12 and 15, all worked at the plant earlier this year and weren\u2019t going to school, according to people familiar with their employment. Their father, Pedro Tzi, confirmed these people\u2019s account in an interview with Reuters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Police in the Tzi family\u2019s 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 their search identified her by name in a public alert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reuters is not using her name in this article because she is a minor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The police force in Enterprise, about 45 miles from the plant in Luverne, doesn\u2019t have jurisdiction to investigate possible labor-law violations at the factory. Instead, the force notified the state attorney general\u2019s office after the incident, James Sanders, an Enterprise police detective, told Reuters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mike Lewis, a spokesperson at the Alabama attorney general\u2019s office, declined to comment. It\u2019s unclear whether the office or other investigators have contacted SMART or Hyundai about possible violations. On Friday, in response to Reuters\u2019 reporting, a spokesperon for the Alabama Department of Labor said it would be coordinating with the U.S. Department of labor and other agencies to investigate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pedro Tzi\u2019s children, who have now enrolled for the upcoming school term, were among a larger cohort of underage workers who found jobs at the Hyundai-owned supplier over the past few years, according to interviews with a dozen former and current plant employees and labor recruiters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Several of these minors, they said, have foregone schooling in order to work long shifts at the plant, a sprawling facility with a documented history of health and safety violations, including amputation hazards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most of the current and former employees who spoke with Reuters did so on the condition of anonymity. Reuters was unable to determine the precise number of children who may have worked at the SMART factory, what the minors were paid or other terms of their employment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The revelation of child labor in Hyundai\u2019s U.S. supply chain could spark consumer, regulatory and reputational backlash for one of the most powerful and profitable automakers in the world. In a \u201chuman rights policy\u201d posted online, Hyundai says it forbids child labor throughout its workforce, including suppliers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The company recently said it will expand in the United States, planning over $5 billion in investments including a new electric vehicle factory near Savannah, Georgia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cConsumers should be outraged,\u201d said David Michaels, the former U.S. assistant secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, with whom Reuters shared the findings of its reporting.Slideshow ( 3 images )<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey should know that these cars are being built, at least in part, by workers who are children and need to be in school rather than risking life and limb because their families are desperate for income,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At a time of U.S. labor shortages and supply chain disruptions, labor experts told Reuters there are heightened risks that children, especially undocumented migrants, could end up in workplaces that are hazardous and illegal for minors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Enterprise, home to a bustling poultry industry, Reuters earlier this year chronicled here<\/a> how a Guatemalan minor, who migrated to the United States alone, found work at a local chicken processing plant [L1N2UD23Q].<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWAY TOO YOUNG\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alabama and federal laws limit minors under age 18 from working in metal stamping and pressing operations such as SMART, where proximity to dangerous machinery can put them at risk. Alabama law also requires children 17 and under to be enrolled in school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Michaels, who is now a professor at George Washington University, said safety at U.S.-based Hyundai suppliers was a recurrent concern at OSHA during his eight years leading the agency until he left in 2017. Michaels visited Korea in 2015, and said he warned Hyundai executives that its heavy demand for \u201cjust-in-time\u201d parts was causing safety lapses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The SMART plant builds parts for the popular Elantra, Sonata, and Santa Fe models, vehicles that through June accounted for almost 37% of Hyundai\u2019s U.S. sales, according to the carmaker. The factory has received repeated OSHA penalties for health and safety violations, federal records show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Reuters review of the records shows SMART has been assessed with at least $48,515 in OSHA penalties since 2013, and was most recently fined this year. OSHA inspections at SMART have documented violations including crush and amputation hazards at the factory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The plant, whose website says it has the capacity to supply parts for up to 400,000 vehicles each year, has also had difficulties retaining labor to keep up with Hyundai\u2019s demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In late 2020, SMART wrote a letter to U.S. consular officials in Mexico seeking a visa for a Mexican worker. The letter, written by SMART General Manager Gary Sport and reviewed by Reuters, said the plant was \u201cseverely lacking in labor\u201d and that Hyundai \u201cwill not tolerate such shortcomings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n SMART didn\u2019t answer Reuters questions about the letter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Earlier this year, attorneys filed a class-action lawsuit against SMART and several staffing firms who help supply workers with U.S. 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 some employees, hired as engineers, were ordered to work menial jobs instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n SMART in court documents called allegations in the suit \u201cbaseless\u201d and \u201cmeritless.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of the minors at the plant were hired through recruitment agencies, according to current and former SMART workers and local labor recruiters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although staffing firms help fill industrial jobs nationwide, they have often been criticized by labor advocates because they enable large employers to outsource responsibility for checking the eligibility of employees to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One former worker at SMART, an adult migrant who left for another auto industry job last year, said there were around 50 underage workers between the different plant shifts, adding that he knew some of them personally. Another former adult worker at SMART, a U.S. citizen who also left the plant last year, said she worked alongside about a dozen minors on her shift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another former employee, Tabatha Moultry, 39, worked on SMART\u2019s assembly line for several years through 2019. Moultry said the plant had high turnover and increasingly relied on migrant workers to keep up with intense production demands. She said she remembered working with one migrant girl who \u201clooked 11 or 12 years old.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The girl would come to work with her mother, Moultry said. When Moultry asked her real age, the girl said she was 13. \u201cShe was way too young to be working in that plant, or any plant,\u201d Moultry said. Moultry didn\u2019t provide further details about the girl and Reuters couldn\u2019t independently confirm her account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tzi, the father of the girl who went missing, contacted Enterprise police on Feb 3, after she didn\u2019t come home. Police issued an amber alert, a public advisory when law enforcement believes a child is in danger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They also launched a manhunt for Alvaro Cucul, 21, another Guatemalan migrant and SMART worker around that time with whom Tzi believed she might be. Using cell phone geolocation data, police located Cucul and the girl in a parking lot in Athens, Georgia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The girl told officers that Cucul was a friend and that they had traveled there to look for other work opportunities. Cucul was arrested and later deported, according to people familiar with his deportation. Cucul didn\u2019t respond to a Facebook message from Reuters seeking comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the disappearance generated local news coverage, SMART dismissed a number of underage workers, according to two former employees and other locals familiar with the plant. The sources said the police attention raised fears that authorities could soon crack down on other underage workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tzi, the father, also once worked at SMART and now does odd jobs in the construction and forestry industries. He told Reuters he regrets that his children had gone to work. The family needed any income it could get at the time, he added, but is now trying to move on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll that is over now,\u201d he said. \u201cThe kids aren\u2019t working and in fall they will be in school.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Editing by Paulo Prada<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our Standards:\u00a0The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n (Contributed by Louise Denish)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Joshua Schneyer, Mica Rosenberg, Kristina Cooke July 22, 2022 (reuters.com) LUVERNE, Alabama (Reuters) -A subsidiary of Hyundai Motor Co has used child labor at a plant that supplies parts for the Korean carmaker\u2019s assembly line in nearby Montgomery, Alabama, according to area police, the family of three underage workers, and eight former… Continue reading