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It's probably pretty common in American-owned industries known to use human trafficking, but trafficking exploits populations our society isn't concerned enough about to proactively monitor. The agency Hyundai used for workers is not Korean– it's Guatemalan– and it likely supplies farms, food processing plants, and other businesses that need lots of low end labor. Check out the Frontline documentary on human trafficking in food processing plants. The worst offender was an egg processor based in Maine.

A friend who worked for a union that organized poultry plant workers said some of these plants– all large, American companies with names you see in every grocery store— essentially ignored labor laws entirely. One actually had a jail cell in the factory used as a disciplinary measure for misbehaving employees.

"One actually had a jail cell in the factory used as a disciplinary measure for misbehaving employees."

This seems like a fairly easy thing for the media (or the union) to expose - so is there any evidence this is true? Seems more likely to be union FUD if the union doesn't expose the evidence

Was curious and didn't find reporting on that, just stories that were somehow worse:

https://revealnews.org/article/they-thought-they-were-going-...

https://revealnews.org/blog/response-to-labor-camp-investiga...

https://theappeal.org/louisiana-poultry-plant-prison-labor/

Public evidence? No. Do you have public evidence of everything your proven trustworthy friends tell you? Luckily, my anecdote isn't supporting a legal action or news story.

He said the union absolutely used it to pressure management into a more favorable stance towards Unionization, and the plant is now unionized.

Your anecdote is supporting a forum post that you expect readers to believe is true. It's a news story.

Good lord. Get a hobby.

I have a hobby, thanks. It involves trying to learn more about the world, making reasonable judgements about authenticity of what I hear, and asking in good faith for more evidence when what is provided is insufficient - "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"

> 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,

That doesn't make it ok, does it? What you're describing sounds a lot like the conditions that migrant workers in Qatar and Saudi Arabia are working in.

The US shouldn't tolerate such conditions for workers in factories on its soil, no matter who operates them and where the workers are from.

In fact, no country caring about human rights should. I'm from Germany and in the early Covid phase in 2020 it became clear that there are a lot of east European workers in our slaughterhouses, with them living in very tightly packed quarters (for which they had to pay exaggerated prices to their employers) leading to a massive spread of the disease. At the time, many politicians cried that something will have to change, but of course nothing happened and the whole thing was forgotten as quickly as it had come to light.

I don’t think the person you are replying to was saying child slavery was ok, just adding more info on they sometimes get away with it.

>The US shouldn't tolerate such conditions for workers in factories on its soil //

Nor for any company the USA law has reach over. Y'all stop copyright all around the World, but that protects executive wages so it's pretty clear where the morals lie here.

If there's anyone involved in a company, and that person can reasonable be expected to know human trafficking, or forced child labour are happening under the auspices of that company, any where in the World, if those people are in reach of Western countries extradition agreements then they should be prosecuted. The companies should be fined a minimum of a years [recent average] profit, and all execs fined a minimum of a years wage.

That doesn't make it ok, does it?

At what point did I say it was OK? You're railing against a comment that agrees with your position.

I'm sorry if I misinterpreted the thrust of your argument. The way you pointed out this was a Korean-run factory and that it was 'extremely unusual' to be carried out by American companies sounded to me like relativizing what was (or is) going on here.

What he's saying is that it's only a US company in the legal sense and that they're not necessarily operated with "American values".

Why the downvotes? I'm just paraphrasing what the GP said because the parent misunderstood.

In this case the child seems to have been from Guatemala so I’m not sure this is exactly the situation you’re describing.

It's not. And I'm not trying to excuse what was done. I'm merely pointing out that this is a very large and complex problem.

> There are multiple Chinese factories in Italy churning out "Made in Italy" leather good for the luxury market.

The one's in Milan are terrifying, and often have some mafia (often southern) and triad affiliations, an Italian movie about the Camorra briefly goes into he detail of just how dark that part of the fashion industry is. I lived in Italy during the later end of the financial crisis and it was pretty common to see hordes of Han-Chinese come to Emilia Romanaga who had fled Milan and look for work on farms and restaurants.

Seeing tons of refugees living in parks and waiting all day in the piazzas made it feel like I was living in the 21st century version of Salo, which is a fucked up sordid tale from the 20th Century.

How do they get visas for the workers for this?

And how haven't we jailed the people who got paid off to not notice this?

This is the saddest part... from bribes to lobbying (legal bribes, a true WTF in it's own sense)...

Criminals are going to bribe, sure, undestandable.. but people, government employees, who should be working for 'us', the taxpayers, are taking bribes... the punishment for them should be a vastly higher than for someone just offering a bribe... and somehow, (usually) nothing ever happens to them... maybe someone loses their job, but that's it.

Absolutely, it is impossible for no one to notice this.

That factory should have a managers at least. They should be in jail.

These aren't H1B people. Labor and agriculture visas are a lot easier to come by.

Or, in some cases, they use illegal labor. I doubt that the federal government gave a work visa to the 13-year-old in the article.

For the ones doing it legally, L visas. For the ones doing it illegally, B or F visas.

> 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

I find this incredibly interesting and somewhat surprising, can you substantiate the scale of this problem a little bit more, or link 3-5 map locations?