At least four major suppliers of Hyundai and sister company Kia have employed child labour at factories in the US state of Alabama in recent years, a Reuters investigation found.

• US state and federal authorities are investigating as many as six other manufacturers in Hyundai's Alabama supply chain
• Reuters found staffing agencies placed migrant minors in plants where regulations ban kids from working
• Hyundai subsidiaries Hwashin and Ajin said they hadn't, "to the best of our knowledge," hired underage workers

United States state and federal agencies are also probing whether kids have worked at as many as a half-dozen additional manufacturers throughout the automakers' supply chain in the southern US state.

At a plant owned by Hwashin America, a supplier to the two car brands in the south Alabama town of Greenville, a 14-year-old Guatemalan girl worked this May assembling auto body components, according to interviews with her father and law enforcement officials.

At plants owned by Korean auto-parts maker Ajin Industrial, in the east Alabama town of Cusseta, a former production engineer told Reuters he worked with at least 10 minors.

And six other ex-employees of Ajin said they, too, worked alongside multiple underage labourers.

In two separate statements sent by the same public relations firm, Hwashin and Ajin said their policies forbid the hiring of any worker not of legally employable age.

Using identical language, both companies said they hadn't, "to the best of our knowledge," hired underage workers.

The employment of children at Hwashin and Ajin has not been previously reported.

The news follows a Reuters report in July that revealed the use of child workers, one as young as 12, by SMART Alabama, a Hyundai subsidiary in the south Alabama town of Luverne.

In August, the US Department of Labor said that SL Alabama, 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 labour by various state and federal law enforcement or regulatory agencies, according to two people familiar with the probes.

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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-17/child-workers-found-throughout-hyundai-kia-supply-chain-alabama/101784996

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