Child workers found throughout Hyundai-Kia supply chain in Alabama
Source: Reuters
At least four major suppliers of Hyundai Motor Co and sister Kia Corp have employed child labor at Alabama factories in recent years, a Reuters investigation found, and state and federal agencies are probing whether kids have worked at as many as a half dozen additional manufacturers throughout the automakers’ supply chain in the southern U.S. state. At a plant owned by Hwashin America Corp, a supplier to the two car brands in the south Alabama town of Greenville, a 14-year-old Guatemalan girl worked this May assembling auto body components, according to interviews with her father and law enforcement officials.
At plants owned by Korean auto-parts maker Ajin Industrial Co, in the east Alabama town of Cusseta, a former production engineer told Reuters he worked with at least 10 minors. And six other ex-employees of Ajin said they, too, worked alongside multiple underage laborers. In two separate statements sent by the same public relations firm, Hwashin and Ajin said their policies forbid the hiring of any worker not of legally employable age. Using identical language, both companies said they hadn’t, “to the best of our knowledge,” hired underage workers.
The employment of children at Hwashin and Ajin hasn’t been previously reported. The news follows a Reuters report in July that revealed the use of child workers, one as young as 12, by SMART Alabama LLC, a Hyundai subsidiary in the south Alabama town of Luverne. In August, the U.S. Department of Labor said that SL Alabama LLC, another Hyundai supplier and a unit of South Korea’s SL Corp, employed underage workers, including a 13-year-old, at its factory in Alexander City.
Since then, as many as 10 Alabama plants that supply parts to Hyundai or Kia have been investigated for child labor by various state and federal law enforcement or regulatory agencies, according to two people familiar with the probes. The investigations are being conducted across small towns and rural outposts where many of the suppliers and the job recruiters that staff them are located. It isn’t yet clear whether the probes will lead to criminal charges, fines or other penalties, the two people said.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immigration-hyundai/
I actually heard this reported on the local news radio today.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Should start a class action lawsuit to see how many come out of the woodwork. 
Loads of safety concerns & tons of recalls.
For example: exploding seatbelt tensioners. Just 1 exampke of many I've read about.
Loved the recall for onstrument panels installed up-side-down. Wth?
(No I do not own one, but lots of folks in this region do & they are absolute junk.)
Last edited Fri Dec 16, 2022, 07:39 PM - Edit history (1)
My mom's 2008 Elantra is still on the road, being driven by a friend of mine. No issues. My sister's on her second Tucson. No issues for her, either.
Now, lemme tell ya some stories about the Fords I've owned... 
Not good. 
whether sharecropping on farms or working in a family tailor shop where the family lived above the store.
It's one of the things that Mother Jones tried to highlight a century and a quarter ago, where she lead children from here in Philly up to Teddy Roosevelt's house.
I know annually on Labor Day on DU, I try to pay tribute to Mother Jones as this is where I first saw someone post an audio book version (Librevox) of Mother Jones' own autobiography and I was completely floored by her life and her contributions to the labor movement here in the U.S. (and particularly her involvement in the mills here in Philly).
