I think the thing that shocks me the most is that the punishment from the Department of Labor is a very mild slap-on-the-wrist. A small fine and a promise not to do it any more. This should basically be the end of that company entirely. Instead they just have to point the finger at some low-level managers, fire them, and keep on rolling. I would think criminal charges are warranted for importing 12 and 13 year-olds for labor. The children can't consent. That's essentially child slave labor.
If Hyundai/Kia drops them, that would at least be a much bigger penalty than the DOL imposed.
> The children can't consent. That's essentially child slave labor.
Minors can totally consent to labor; it's pretty common too (see: child actors). The issue with children working in factories is a (1) safety and (2) exploitation issue, not a consent issue—in fact even adult parents (who can presumably consent) aren't allowed to get exemptions for their children in some high-risk situations either. There are lots of exemptions for child labor though, especially in areas where safety and exploitation risks are deemed to be lower. Worth reading: https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/youthlabor/exemptionsflsa
Edit to clarify (since some people seem to be reading this different): this isn't my opinion, support, or opposition on what I believe children can or should consent to; I'm just discussing labor laws here.
I read an article in the New York Times maybe around ten years ago where some researchers called some labor departments to report child labor (it wasn't actually happening that they knew of; the point was to see how they would respond). They were basically uninterested and didn't follow up.
SL Alabama told Reuters in a statement that a staffing agency had furnished some employees to the plant who were not old enough to work there. SL said it had cooperated with regulators, terminated its relationship with the staffing firm, agreed to fines and other corrective actions, and replaced the president of the facility.
It sounds like JK USA will rightfully be destroyed by this. If it really was just a handful of kids employed by a sub sub contractor I don't see why everyone in the whole factory should lose their livelihoods. The parents need some counseling and a stern scaring too but I wouldn't push too hard on a family desperate enough to send their kids to a factory.
We still allow slave labor in general in the US[1] and farm labor for 13 year olds. That’s not to defend this practice but to point out it’s not as big an ethical leap for someone already observing situations close to this and rationalizing it as just pushing the envelope a bit in their mind.
[1]see the text of the 13th amendment and how private prisons operate if you are one of the 10000 today whose just learning this
Welcome to current year. Its all good as long as the children been exploited are not the children of the people who vote for you. Its all green as long as the coal or oil burning is being done away from your borders.
There’s a reason why industry likes to pursue business in places like Alabama with awful infrastructure and education.
Expenses for things like conversion of documentation to pictures instead of text (the workers are functionally illiterate) are one time, but you can pay someone $13/hr instead of $25/hr in a less regressive place.
> I would think criminal charges are warranted for importing 12 and 13 year-olds for labor.
I don't see where any children were "imported". Instead it seems like some 13-16 year olds got jobs. (Note, none of the children were 12). You brought up consent (which later responses delve into 'parental consent') and I have no clue what the parents thought.
Still, they did violate child labor laws and should be punished. I agree with that principle.
The consequences didn't seem that mild. They paid a fine of $7,000 per minor. They agreed to destroy any products the children were involved in producing. They implemented new methods to prevent this in the future. They fired the third party staffing agency that found the children (and which I would agree should have other consequences). And, far from "firing low-level managers", the president of the factory was fired.
>I would think criminal charges are warranted for importing 12 and 13 year-olds for labor.
Is there anything to suggest that they were actually trafficking humans? I think it is far more likely that they were illegal immigrants already in the States.
I did a paper route and opened a store before school. I loved the work - the above is crazy talk. Plenty of kids delivered papers near me. Now I make mid 6 figures. I learned a ton opening that store that has served me through life even though the actual work is totally different.
Part of the problem is that if the DOL goes after every underage worker in the economy, the biggest offenders by far would be family businesses and restaurants.
It's all well and good to make parents send their kids to school. But at a certain point the punishments can exacerbate child poverty.
I work on ESG consulting and part of the speech we give is "... ESG is not only environmental, there's other important areas to improve like making sure there's no kids working on your company, blah blah" kind of like a joke and it then triggers more jokes from the other side like "Oh you got us, time to change our plans" etc ... and then we never talk about the subject again because who is going to actually do that, right? Right?!
Well, color me amazed, TIL there's child labor happening in the US.
I worked from 12 in a fairly industrial business and mostly appreciated the experience because I was in poverty. Meanwhile the school I was actually forced to go to was abusive.
Of course businesses do this. If nothing else the kids in poverty are literally going to ask for a part time job and a few people will say yes because they won’t see the harm because there actually isn’t any.
The only abusive sounding part of this story to me is the kids were pulled out of school and seemingly working at the factory all the time. What is surprising here is that it went beyond “child helps contractor/small business on the weekend and gets money under the table” and instead “large corporation had full time child labourer at factory” which is rather extreme by American standards. But child labour is plenty common, if you’ve eaten chocolate recently there’s a good chance it was made with tiny child hands, rich people literally just can’t comprehend such things.
It is extremely unusual for this kind of labor abuse to be carried out by American companies. As the articles note, these are Korean-owned and Korean-operated companies.
FTA: "Korean-operated SL Alabama, finding children as young as age 13."
There are hundreds of foreign owned and operated factories in America that are run like independent kingdoms, staffed with people from other countries with their own restaurants and dorms so the workers are never exposed to the outside world, so that the company can put the all important "Made in USA" label on the product. There's at least one all-Chinese factory outside of Las Vegas. There was a Chinese-run industrial marijuana farming operation shut down in Arizona last year.
And this is not unique to the United States. There are similar operations in Italy, Germany, and elsewhere. There are multiple Chinese factories in Italy churning out "Made in Italy" leather good for the luxury market.
Lots of newspaper articles about it over the last ten years or so.
ESG is a complete farce in implementation, or at least that's what I gathered once I learned that a tobacco company like Altria can have a 79/100 ESG score.
If there's enough "other stuff" that can bring a company who's existence causes death and disease as its main impact on society to 79/100, I don't really care about the scoring system.
I am amazed. Having worked in and around US Manufacturing plants my entire adult life, I have never once even see anyone that could be considered a child working in any plant I have ever been in, and I have been in alot of manufacturers. All of owned by American entities and people.
As Reuters reported, migrant children from Guatemala found working at SMART Alabama, LLC and SL Alabama had been hired by recruiting or staffing firms in the region. In a statement to Reuters this week, Hyundai said it had already stopped relying on at least one labor recruiting firm that had been hiring for SMART
I hope the right agencies step in to help these kids … brutal as it may be it just might be possible that the kids did not receive any assistance so this (working) was probably their only way of surviving.
I'd really like to know more about the "oppressive" part. Were these 12 year olds lying about their age to get a summer job? Or were these children getting pimped by a staffing firm?
I think there should be a huge divergence of punishment options based on the actual details.
I remember having a paper route when I was 10 years old. Yeah, not the same thing as a factory line job, but I wanted the job for extra money.
If these kids were forced to work, that's horrible, fine the company, punish them hard.
But if these were kids working a few 4 hour shifts a week because their parents worked there, then that's entirely different. Not legal, but not the same as exploiting some youngster against their will.
Yeah I wonder if the Dad was a manager so he put his son to work or something. They said these were "documented" citizens which I assume means they're not illegal child immigrants. The only other thing we know is that most of these factories were set up by Koreans companies, so they're probably not super small mom and pop shops. The fact they didn't go more in depth into their situation makes me wonder if it's because it goes contrary to the narrative, I know Reuters has a habit of doing that
>A Reuters investigative report in July documented children, including a 12-year-old, working at a Hyundai-controlled metal stamping plant in rural Luverne, Alabama, called SMART Alabama, LLC.
> In a statement on Wednesday, SL Alabama said it had taken "aggressive steps to remedy the situation" as soon it learned a subcontractor had provided underage workers.
It's hard to believe no one noticed 12 year olds working in manufacturing. It would be one thing if they were 17 and this were some legal technicality.
Willful violation of the law and a "oops weird" cover up. The fine will likely be a fraction of the money they saved.
When our contract with the child labor ends we will put out a search for a replacement contract company. This time when we say "CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP Labor on the bid we will specify we don't mean "Child labor cheap" just regular old undocumented slave labor cheap.
Worth noting that one of these suppliers appears to have been majority-owned by Hyundai itself. The Hyundai subsidiary apparently targeted the families of recent immigrants.
I had a friend who had a really bad home life. His mom was abusive and mentally unstable. He moved out at 15, and "child labor" was why he could rent and eat.
Nonetheless it should by far, exceedingly, not be the norm.
I myself had a job in my school at ~15 myself, it was nbd and I was happy for some spending money that my mom couldn't provide.
@dang - the title in editorialized and misleading. The actual title is: "Korean auto giant Hyundai investigating child labor in its U.S. supply chain"
The article only mentions Korean owned suppliers operating in the US, some directly controlled by Hyundai, which were investigated by Alabama's state Department of Labor, in coordination with federal agencies.
This really awful, but maybe it's also an indicator of the flattening effects of globalization?
Not so long ago, the unthinkable thing wouldn't have been child labor in the supply chain of a big company, but we all would have expected it to be an American company with Asian manufacturing. Actually relatively recently, I had an executive from an American company express to me earnestly that child sweatshop labor helps grow local economies, and therefore it was misguided to condemn the practice. But it seemed implicit, in a condescending way, that that was justifiable for other people in other places.
99% of "child labor" cases in the first world are actually completely reasonable. I'm glad I was able to break child labor laws as a kid - it was very helpful for my actual and perceived level of independence, was a great learning experience, and let me overcome meager material conditions.
I think a lot of people here had soft lives as kids and extrapolate from that experience that kids are too fragile to handle working or something.
Slight problem… you’re firing the whistleblowers at that supplier who reported the problem in the first place. This is going to discourage future whistleblowing for unethical practices.
Employee comments about jobs in that stamping plant.[1]
Some of the comments are totally generic and probably fake. The ones that say twelve hour days for five to seven days a week are probably real.
Well if this is true, seems to be another indicator of the US Race to the bottom. 40/50 years ago ,this would have been a big scandal in the US. Since a certain US president in the early 80s, seems the US has been slowly slipping into third world country territory. And the massive "defense" spending another indicator if this.
For capitalism to work in the modern era, we need to make an example out of misbehaving companies every so often. Like… destroy the company and throw the officers in prison.
I want shareholders so petrified of their stock suddenly being worth nothing that they keep the board in check who makes heads roll when this kind of bullshit is tried.
Everything less is a tacit acceptance that child labour is fine as long as you factor the cost into doing business.
I don’t condone child labor but it made me think: What if I were a 13 year old with good grades and I consented with parents and got a proper work permit. If the money I made went into good investments, that would be a whole lot of compounded money for later in life. I would do it!
Heh. Good grades? The more kids have to work during school, the worse their grades and educational outcomes are. Work permit? Do you think the factory is following proper work hour restrictions for a kid? Safety... Can a 13 year old be properly trained to be safe in a factory? Consent? Kids cannot consent because they aren't mature enough to consider everything I mentioned. Finally you're assuming the money might be invested, whereas maybe they can't even open a bank account without help. I hope the money becomes theirs. Do you think it will?
This is not the American dream, it's the American nightmare. Kids need to be kids. Learning and developing is a very difficult full time job.
[+] [-] jmull|3 years ago|reply
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/hyundai-kia-auto-parts-supp...
(This links to more info.)
Wow.
I think the thing that shocks me the most is that the punishment from the Department of Labor is a very mild slap-on-the-wrist. A small fine and a promise not to do it any more. This should basically be the end of that company entirely. Instead they just have to point the finger at some low-level managers, fire them, and keep on rolling. I would think criminal charges are warranted for importing 12 and 13 year-olds for labor. The children can't consent. That's essentially child slave labor.
If Hyundai/Kia drops them, that would at least be a much bigger penalty than the DOL imposed.
[+] [-] dataflow|3 years ago|reply
Minors can totally consent to labor; it's pretty common too (see: child actors). The issue with children working in factories is a (1) safety and (2) exploitation issue, not a consent issue—in fact even adult parents (who can presumably consent) aren't allowed to get exemptions for their children in some high-risk situations either. There are lots of exemptions for child labor though, especially in areas where safety and exploitation risks are deemed to be lower. Worth reading: https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/youthlabor/exemptionsflsa
Edit to clarify (since some people seem to be reading this different): this isn't my opinion, support, or opposition on what I believe children can or should consent to; I'm just discussing labor laws here.
[+] [-] emodendroket|3 years ago|reply
In short, I'm less surprised but it is appalling.
[+] [-] neither_color|3 years ago|reply
It sounds like JK USA will rightfully be destroyed by this. If it really was just a handful of kids employed by a sub sub contractor I don't see why everyone in the whole factory should lose their livelihoods. The parents need some counseling and a stern scaring too but I wouldn't push too hard on a family desperate enough to send their kids to a factory.
[+] [-] lovich|3 years ago|reply
[1]see the text of the 13th amendment and how private prisons operate if you are one of the 10000 today whose just learning this
[+] [-] irusensei|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spooky23|3 years ago|reply
Expenses for things like conversion of documentation to pictures instead of text (the workers are functionally illiterate) are one time, but you can pay someone $13/hr instead of $25/hr in a less regressive place.
[+] [-] HWR_14|3 years ago|reply
I don't see where any children were "imported". Instead it seems like some 13-16 year olds got jobs. (Note, none of the children were 12). You brought up consent (which later responses delve into 'parental consent') and I have no clue what the parents thought.
Still, they did violate child labor laws and should be punished. I agree with that principle.
The consequences didn't seem that mild. They paid a fine of $7,000 per minor. They agreed to destroy any products the children were involved in producing. They implemented new methods to prevent this in the future. They fired the third party staffing agency that found the children (and which I would agree should have other consequences). And, far from "firing low-level managers", the president of the factory was fired.
[+] [-] s1artibartfast|3 years ago|reply
Is there anything to suggest that they were actually trafficking humans? I think it is far more likely that they were illegal immigrants already in the States.
[+] [-] onphonenow|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] faeriechangling|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] warbler73|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] inetknght|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] legitster|3 years ago|reply
It's all well and good to make parents send their kids to school. But at a certain point the punishments can exacerbate child poverty.
[+] [-] moralestapia|3 years ago|reply
Well, color me amazed, TIL there's child labor happening in the US.
[+] [-] faeriechangling|3 years ago|reply
Of course businesses do this. If nothing else the kids in poverty are literally going to ask for a part time job and a few people will say yes because they won’t see the harm because there actually isn’t any.
The only abusive sounding part of this story to me is the kids were pulled out of school and seemingly working at the factory all the time. What is surprising here is that it went beyond “child helps contractor/small business on the weekend and gets money under the table” and instead “large corporation had full time child labourer at factory” which is rather extreme by American standards. But child labour is plenty common, if you’ve eaten chocolate recently there’s a good chance it was made with tiny child hands, rich people literally just can’t comprehend such things.
[+] [-] reaperducer|3 years ago|reply
It is extremely unusual for this kind of labor abuse to be carried out by American companies. As the articles note, these are Korean-owned and Korean-operated companies.
FTA: "Korean-operated SL Alabama, finding children as young as age 13."
There are hundreds of foreign owned and operated factories in America that are run like independent kingdoms, staffed with people from other countries with their own restaurants and dorms so the workers are never exposed to the outside world, so that the company can put the all important "Made in USA" label on the product. There's at least one all-Chinese factory outside of Las Vegas. There was a Chinese-run industrial marijuana farming operation shut down in Arizona last year.
And this is not unique to the United States. There are similar operations in Italy, Germany, and elsewhere. There are multiple Chinese factories in Italy churning out "Made in Italy" leather good for the luxury market.
Lots of newspaper articles about it over the last ten years or so.
[+] [-] vasco|3 years ago|reply
If there's enough "other stuff" that can bring a company who's existence causes death and disease as its main impact on society to 79/100, I don't really care about the scoring system.
[+] [-] gumby|3 years ago|reply
Not all of it is illegal. There is an exception for tobacco farming, which employs children as young as 10.
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/child-lab...
https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/12/09/teens-tobacco-fields/c...
[+] [-] phpisthebest|3 years ago|reply
ESG is not needed to not have child labor.
[+] [-] mlindner|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] permo-w|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pigalowda|3 years ago|reply
As Reuters reported, migrant children from Guatemala found working at SMART Alabama, LLC and SL Alabama had been hired by recruiting or staffing firms in the region. In a statement to Reuters this week, Hyundai said it had already stopped relying on at least one labor recruiting firm that had been hiring for SMART
[+] [-] la64710|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] legitster|3 years ago|reply
I think there should be a huge divergence of punishment options based on the actual details.
[+] [-] refurb|3 years ago|reply
I remember having a paper route when I was 10 years old. Yeah, not the same thing as a factory line job, but I wanted the job for extra money.
If these kids were forced to work, that's horrible, fine the company, punish them hard.
But if these were kids working a few 4 hour shifts a week because their parents worked there, then that's entirely different. Not legal, but not the same as exploiting some youngster against their will.
[+] [-] guywithahat|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jorblumesea|3 years ago|reply
> In a statement on Wednesday, SL Alabama said it had taken "aggressive steps to remedy the situation" as soon it learned a subcontractor had provided underage workers.
It's hard to believe no one noticed 12 year olds working in manufacturing. It would be one thing if they were 17 and this were some legal technicality.
Willful violation of the law and a "oops weird" cover up. The fine will likely be a fraction of the money they saved.
[+] [-] maxfurman|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] citizenpaul|3 years ago|reply
Who wants to bet those aggressive steps will be.
When our contract with the child labor ends we will put out a search for a replacement contract company. This time when we say "CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP Labor on the bid we will specify we don't mean "Child labor cheap" just regular old undocumented slave labor cheap.
[+] [-] bombcar|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeffbee|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tptacek|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maerF0x0|3 years ago|reply
Nonetheless it should by far, exceedingly, not be the norm.
I myself had a job in my school at ~15 myself, it was nbd and I was happy for some spending money that my mom couldn't provide.
[+] [-] such12|3 years ago|reply
The article only mentions Korean owned suppliers operating in the US, some directly controlled by Hyundai, which were investigated by Alabama's state Department of Labor, in coordination with federal agencies.
[+] [-] abeppu|3 years ago|reply
Not so long ago, the unthinkable thing wouldn't have been child labor in the supply chain of a big company, but we all would have expected it to be an American company with Asian manufacturing. Actually relatively recently, I had an executive from an American company express to me earnestly that child sweatshop labor helps grow local economies, and therefore it was misguided to condemn the practice. But it seemed implicit, in a condescending way, that that was justifiable for other people in other places.
[+] [-] knaekhoved|3 years ago|reply
I think a lot of people here had soft lives as kids and extrapolate from that experience that kids are too fragile to handle working or something.
[+] [-] Yoofie|3 years ago|reply
There need to be a minimum 5+ zeroes on top of the fine + jail time, or nothing will change.
[+] [-] CyanLite4|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Smart-Alabama,-LLC/reviews
[+] [-] jmclnx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kache_|3 years ago|reply
there's all kinds of abuse going on, even without the child labour, in labour intensive jobs.
man this sucked to read
[+] [-] 1-6|3 years ago|reply
Of course, because they were the ones wrongfully letting this happen without knowing.
[+] [-] Waterluvian|3 years ago|reply
I want shareholders so petrified of their stock suddenly being worth nothing that they keep the board in check who makes heads roll when this kind of bullshit is tried.
Everything less is a tacit acceptance that child labour is fine as long as you factor the cost into doing business.
[+] [-] Vt71fcAqt7|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1-6|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zulban|3 years ago|reply
This is not the American dream, it's the American nightmare. Kids need to be kids. Learning and developing is a very difficult full time job.
[+] [-] tomcam|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dirtyid|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eunos|3 years ago|reply