A Reuters investigation discovered that at least four suppliers of Hyundai Motor Company and Kia Corporation have illegally employed minors to work in factories. It was found that one child worker was as young as twelve, as well as a 14-year-old Guatemalan girl assembling body components. Former employees of Ajin Industrial Company, an auto parts maker, said they worked alongside numerous underage workers. State and federal agencies have launched investigations across up to ten Alabama plants supplying parts to Hyundai and Kia.
From Reuters:
In-house human rights policies, posted by both brands online, prohibit child labor at Hyundai and Kia facilities and among their suppliers, too. Alabama and U.S. law restrict factory work for people under age 16, and all workers under 18 are forbidden from many hazardous jobs in auto plants, where metal presses, cutting machines and speeding forklifts can endanger life and limb. After the earlier reporting by Reuters on child labor at suppliers SMART and SL, Hyundai’s chief operating officer, José Muñoz, told the news agency he ordered the carmaker’s purchasing department to cease business with the suppliers named in the news reports “as soon as possible.” He also said the company would investigate all suppliers to Hyundai's Alabama operations. Hyundai, Muñoz added, would seek to end the use of third-party staffing agencies that many of its suppliers have relied upon to vet and hire workers. Hyundai is now backing away from Muñoz’s remarks. In its recent statement to Reuters, Hyundai said it has canceled its plans to cut off suppliers where minors have worked. Two of its suppliers, SMART and SL, have taken “corrective actions” to fire staffing agencies they found problematic, it said. Noting the “important economic role” that parts makers play in many small Alabama towns, Hyundai added, “additional oversight is a better course at this time than severing ties with these suppliers.” ... Earlier this year, Reuters showed how staffing agencies in rural Alabama recruited undocumented workers from Central America, including minors who had entered the U.S. without parents or guardians, and supplied them to chicken processing plants. As with those minors, at least some of the children who worked at Hyundai suppliers used false identities and documentation obtained through black-market brokers, sometimes with the help of staffing firms themselves. ... A key element of Hyundai’s supply network is its ability to provide “just-in-time” delivery of parts, a staple of modern manufacturing meant to minimize stockpiles of materials. To avoid halting assembly lines, Hyundai can fine suppliers – sometimes thousands of dollars per minute – for any delay, according to people familiar with its operations. Pressure to deliver, several current and former employees at suppliers told Reuters, intensified in recent years because of the labor and supply shortages that crippled manufacturers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
