At least four suppliers in the United States of the South Korean automobile companies Hyundai and Kia, the two largest in that Asian country, have exploited minors (including Latinos) in factories in the state of Alabama in recent years, according to The Reuters news agency reported this Friday.
Reuters reported in July that SMART, a Hyundai subsidiary in Luverne, Alabama that supplies parts for Elantra, Sonata and Santa Fe models, employed minors despite federal law prohibiting people under the age of 18 years pressing metals due to the use of dangerous machinery.
Alabama law also requires that children under the age of 17 be in school.
Among the exploited minors was a 14-year-old Guatemalan teenager and her two brothers, ages 12 and 15, according to her father, Pedro Ji, denounced.
The young woman's family, who resided in Enterprise, Alabama, reported her missing in February.
Authorities found her in Georgia with a 21-year-old Guatemalan migrant;
he said that he had traveled there in search of other job opportunities.
His case led to SMART laying off an unknown number of minor workers.
The Labor Department reported a month later that two other Hyundai suppliers also employed minors.
Since then, a dozen factories that supply materials to Hyundai or Kia have been investigated for child exploitation by federal and state authorities, according to Reuters, although it is not yet known whether criminal charges or fines will be imposed for these alleged practices.
The laws of Alabama and the United States restrict work in factories to those under 16 years of age and the International Labor Organization establishes that it is a violation of fundamental human rights, since it hinders the development of children, and that it potentially causes them harm lasting physical and psychological
An underage worker previously employed at the SL factory walks home in Savannah, Georgia, December 9, 2022.CHENEY ORR/REUTERS
So far, SL, the manufacturer from Alexander City, is the only supplier to Hyundai or Kia accused of violating child labor laws.
On August 9, state and federal police and labor authorities found seven workers between the ages of 13 and 16 at the SL factory, the news agency reported.
Hyundai told Reuters it "will not tolerate violations of labor laws";
Kia, for its part, "strongly condemned any child employment practices."
The news agency analyzed how employment agencies in rural Alabama counties recruit undocumented migrants who sometimes come to the country alone despite being minors, and direct them to factories or meat processing plants.
Both these children and those who worked for Hyundai suppliers used false identities and documents obtained on the black market, sometimes with the help of staffing companies.
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“When workers are desperate for a job, they have no power and there is a lot of competition, there is often a race to the bottom,” Jordan Barab, a former deputy assistant secretary at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, told Reuters. the federal regulatory body for workplaces.
These companies are not the only ones denounced for hiring minors in the United States.
An investigation by Noticias Telemundo detailed that Hispanic children have worked cleaning meat packing plants in Nebraska, Minnesota and Missouri.
The Labor Department has filed a complaint against Packing Sanitation Services Inc. (PSSI), a cleaning company it accuses of hiring 31 Latino minors to clean three meat processing plants in Nebraska and Minnesota.
Twenty-five of them, between the ages of 13 and 17, worked for PSSI at the plant that the meat multinational JBS has in Grand Island (Nebraska).
In addition to investigating the Grand Island plant, in Nebraska, and the Worthington and Marshall plants, in Minnesota, the Labor Department also sought to inspect a Tyson plant in Sedalia, Missouri, and PSSI facilities in Wisconsin.
They believe there is reason to believe that the cleaning company may have hired minors at the 400 plants it operates across the country.