Report: More Hyundai Suppliers Accused of Using Child Labor

A new report accuses at least four Hyundai suppliers in Alabama of using child labor in recent years.

An investigation by the Reuters news service says in addition to those four suppliers, who also make parts for Hyundai’s sister automaker Kia, state and federal agencies are probing whether children have worked at as many as a half dozen additional  suppliers in Alabama.

Reuters says at the Hwashin America plant in Greenville, a 14-year-old Guatemalan girl worked this May assembling auto body components, according to interviews with her father and law enforcement.

Reuters also says at plants owned by Ajin Industrial in Cusseta, a former production engineer said he worked with at least 10 minors. Six other ex-employees of Ajin said they, too, worked alongside multiple underage laborers, according to Reuters.

Reuters says 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.

In July, Reuters reported that child workers, one as young as 12, were employed by SMART Alabama, a Hyundai subsidiary in  Luverne.

A class action was filed in federal court in California following that report. The class action was filed on behalf of Lea Reis, who lives in Torrance, California. The suit says she purchased a 2012 Hyundai Sonata that she would not have bought “had she known that defendants used child labor.”

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 minors, including a 13-year-old, at its factory in Alexander City.

In October, the U.S. Department of Labor said it got a federal court order to stop SL Alabama from using child labor at its plant.

Reuters says 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.

Hyundai Motor America provided this statement to Alabama News Network:

“Hyundai does not condone or tolerate violations of labor law. Consistent with the standards and values to which we hold ourselves as a company, we mandate that our suppliers and business partners strictly adhere to the law, and we take reports of alleged violations very seriously.

After we learned of the alleged violations, we took immediate actions, including launching an investigation and a broader review of our U.S. supplier network. At our request, SL Alabama’s upper management team has been replaced, and both SL Alabama and SMART have terminated their relationships with the third-party staffing agencies who certified that they had screened and cleared individuals as being of legal age.

As part of our ongoing review, we are requiring our Alabama suppliers to conduct independently verified audits of their operations and to implement any recommended actions. We anticipate that this intervention will enable them to better identify and address any issues while they continue to provide jobs that support local communities.”