A media report claims that multiple suppliers of Hyundai & Kia have been using child labour.The news first broke out in July this year, when SMART, Alabama - a Hyundai supplier had been hiring employees as young as 12 years of age.
At least four major suppliers of Hyundai Motor and sister Kia have employed child labor at Alabama factories in recent years, a Reuters investigation found, and state and federal agencies are probing whether kids have worked at as many as a half dozen additional manufacturers throughout the automakers supply chain in the southern U.S. state.
In July, a Reuters investigation showed that SMART, a metal stamping company supplying Hyundai and Kia, has used children as young as 12 to work in the f.
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 underage workers, including a 13-year-old, at its factory in Alexander City. 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.