The U.S. Department of Labor is suing South Korean auto giant Hyundai Motors, an auto parts factory and a temporary staffing firm after finding a 13-year-old girl working illegally on an assembly line in Alabama.
The department filed a complaint Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, asking Hyundai, auto parts company Smart Alabama and staffing company Best Practice Services to waive benefits related to their use of child labor. In the complaint, the Department of Labor alleges that the three companies worked together to employ children.
The move comes after federal agents found a 13-year-old girl working 50-60 hours a week at a Smart assembly line in Luverne, Alabama, operating a machine that turns sheet metal into auto body parts, according to the Department of Labor. The girl worked at the facility, which supplies parts to Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama, for six to seven months and “worked on the assembly line making parts instead of attending middle school,” legal documents state.
“The image of a 13-year-old boy working on an assembly line in the United States of America shocks the conscience,” Jessica Luhmann, director of the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Administration, said in a statement.
According to the department, the Korean automaker is responsible for repeated child labor violations at one of its subsidiaries, Smart Alabama, between July 11, 2021 and February 1, 2022. Children were allegedly sent by Best Practice to work at its parts suppliers.
According to the lawsuit, SMART told the staffing agency that it could not allow two employees “who appear to be minors based on their appearance and other physical characteristics to return to the facility.”
“Companies cannot avoid responsibility by blaming their suppliers or recruitment agencies, who are actually the employers, for child labor violations,” Labor Department Counsel Seema Nanda said in a news release.
Hyundai said in a statement that it enforces U.S. labor laws and expressed disappointment that the Labor Department had filed the complaint.
“The use of child labor and violations of labor laws are counter to the standards and values we adhere to as a company,” Hyundai said in a statement. “We spent months thoroughly investigating this matter and took immediate and extensive corrective measures. We have submitted all this information to the U.S. Department of Labor to help resolve the issue, providing detailed explanations of why there is no legal basis for liability in this situation.”
“Unfortunately, the Department of Labor is seeking to apply an unprecedented legal theory that unfairly holds Hyundai liable for the actions of its suppliers and sets a worrying precedent for other auto companies and manufacturers,” the company added.
Hyundai said its suppliers immediately terminated relationships with the staffing firms named in the complaint and that it has reviewed its U.S. supplier network to impose stricter workplace standards. The company also said it is requiring its Alabama suppliers to conduct independently verified operational audits to ensure they are complying with labor laws.
The case marks the first time the Labor Department has sued a major company for allegedly violating child labor laws by a subcontractor and stems from a government investigation and a separate Reuters report that found widespread and illegal use of migrant child laborers at a Hyundai supplier in Alabama.
Reuters reported in 2022 that children as young as 12 were working at Hyundai subsidiaries in the southern state and at other parts suppliers to the company.
The news agency reported on the underage workers at the Smart factory after a Guatemalan migrant girl briefly disappeared from her family home in Alabama in February 2022. Sources told Reuters at the time that the 13-year-old girl and her two brothers, aged 12 and 15, had been working at the factory in 2022 and were not attending school.
In fiscal year 2023, the Department of Labor investigated 955 cases of child labor violations involving 5,792 children nationwide, including 502 who were employed in violation of hazardous occupational standards.
Some minors have suffered serious or fatal injuries in the workplace, including 16-year-old Michael Schulss. Last summer, he was drawn to machinery at a sawmill in Wisconsin. Another 16-year-old worker also died last summer. Man caught in machinery at Mississippi chicken farm.
