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Fed probe finds 13-year-old working at Hyundai plant in Alabama
The U.S. Department of Labor is suing South Korean auto giant Hyundai Motor Co., an auto parts plant and a recruiting company after finding a 13-year-old child illegally working on an assembly line in Alabama.
The agency filed a complaint Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama to require that Hyundai, SMART Alabama, an auto parts company, and Best Practice Service, a staffing agency, relinquish any profits related to the use of child labor.
The move comes after federal investigators found a 13-year-old working up to 50-60 hours a week on an assembly line in Luverne, operating machines that formed sheet metal into auto body parts, the Labor Department said.
“A 13-year-old working on an assembly line in the United States of America shocks the conscience,” Jessica Looman, the DOL’s wage and hour division administrator, said in a release.
The Korean automaker is liable for repeated child labor violations at SMART Alabama, one of its subsidiaries, between July 11, 2021, through Feb. 1, 2022, according to the department. The child was allegedly dispatched to work at the component parts provider by Best Practice, it said.
According to the complaint, SMART told the staffing firm that “two additional employees were not welcome back at the facility due to their appearance and other physical characteristics, which suggested they were also underage.”
“Companies cannot escape liability by blaming suppliers or staffing companies for child labor violations when they are in fact also employers themselves,” Seema Nanda, solicitor of the Labor Department said in a news release.
Hyundai did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
However, a spokesperson told other media outlets including the Washington Post that the Labor Department is attempting to impose “an unprecedented legal theory that would unfairly hold Hyundai accountable for the actions of its suppliers and set a concerning precedent for other automotive companies and manufacturers.”
The case marks the first time the labor department has sued a major company for allegedly violating child labor law at a subcontractor, and stems from a government probe and separate Reuters report that unveiled widespread and illegal use of migrant child laborers at suppliers of Hyundai in Alabama.
Reuters reported in 2022 that children as young as 12 were working for a Hyundai subsidiary and in other parts suppliers for the company in the Southern state.
The wire service reported on underaged workers at Smart after the brief disappearance in February 2022 of a Guatemalan migrant child from her family’s home in Alabama. The 13-year-old girl and two brothers, 12 and 15, worked at the plant in 2022 and were not going to school, sources told Reuters at the time.
The Labor Department in fiscal 2023 investigated 955 cases with child labor violations involving 5,792 kids nationwide, including 502 employed in violation of hazardous occupation standards.
Some minors have suffered serious and fatal injuries on the job, including 16-year-old Michael Schuls, who died after getting pulled into machinery at a Wisconsin sawmill last summer. Another 16-year-old worker also perished last summer after getting caught in a machine at a poultry plant in Mississippi.
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Barry Enderwick is eating his way through history, one sandwich at a time. Every day from his home in San Jose, California, Enderwick posts a cooking video from a recipe that time forgot. From the 1905 British book “Salads, Sandwiches and Savouries,” Enderwick prepared the New York Sandwich.
The recipe called for 24 oysters, minced and mixed with mayonnaise, seasoned with lemon juice and pepper, and spread over buttered day-old French bread.
Rescuing recipes from the dustbin of history doesn’t always lead to culinary success. Sampling his New York Sandwich, Enderwick decried it as “a textural wasteland. No, thank you.” Into the trash bin it went!
But Enderwick’s efforts have yielded his own cookbook, a collection of some of the strangest – and sometimes unexpectedly delicious – historical recipes you’ve never heard of.
Harvard Common Press
He even has a traveling stage show: “Sandwiches of History Live.”
From the condiments to the sliced bread, this former Netflix executive has become something of a sandwich celebrity. “You can put just about anything in-between two slices of bread,” he said. “And it’s portable! In general, a sandwich is pretty easy fare. And so, they just have universal appeal.”
Though the sandwich gets its name famously from the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, the earliest sandwich Enderwick has eaten dates from 200 B.C.E. China, a seared beef sandwich called Rou Jia Mo.
He declared it delicious. “Between the onions, and all those spices and the soy sauce … oh my God! Oh man, this is so good!”
While Elvis was famous for his peanut butter and banana concoction, Enderwick says there’s another celebrity who should be more famous for his sandwich: Gene Kelly, who he says had “the greatest man sandwich in the world, which was basically mashed potatoes on bread. And it was delicious.”
Whether it’s a peanut and sardine sandwich (from “Blondie’s Cook Book” from 1947), or the parmesian radish sandwich (from 1909’s “The Up-To-Date Sandwich Book”), Enderwick tries to get a taste of who we were – good or gross – one recipe at a time.
RECIPE: A sophisticated club sandwich
Blogger Barry Enderwick, of Sandwiches of History, offers “Sunday Morning” viewers a 1958 recipe for a club sandwich that, he says, shouldn’t work, but actually does, really well!
MORE: “Sunday Morning” 2024 “Food Issue” recipe index
Delicious menu suggestions from top chefs, cookbook authors, food writers, restaurateurs, and the editors of Food & Wine magazine.
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Story produced by Anthony Laudato. Editor: Chad Cardin.
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