South Koreans feel betrayed by workforce detentions at Georgia Hyundai plant
apnews.com
apnews.com
Specialized foreign workers were brought in for repair and specialized work. Korean immigrants are able to come in on ESTA visas for 90 days. No issue there. Labor union claimed the workers were doing union non-specialized work and this broke their visa grants.
Suppose that the plant made special workers do non-special work, the hammer does not fall on the workers. It falls on the plant. Yet ICE was brought in to hammer the workers. This is a big screw up in the legal procedures department.
I don't criticize anyone but this administration is a hot mess. And too arrogant to admit it.
And I've heard similar stories from other people, including one where union employees intentionally placed debris to obstruct a non-union worker with a cart; they lay in wait until she came along and picked up the barrier, then got her written up for it.
While I support unions generally, I'm convinced that sour experiences of this variety have worked against them politically.
The company gave up and decided to just sell their product without any services - like having the customer do all the work themselves. It was very inefficient because they had to train their customer’s workers and put together huge amounts of documentation and there were a lot of issues making it work. But the company was able to charge for all of that and basically ended up having the same profit margin anyways. In the end the only person paying the cost was the customer, since they had to deal with work getting done more slowly due to the overhead of training people and a lot of (billed) back-and-forth communication.
On the same software who's only difference was that it had a different icon color.
What stops me from killing and eating my local venture capitalists for their protein content?
So paying a union person isn't a tax, any more than paying anyone else. Everything is government mandated or regulated. Is paying interest to Chase Bank a tax? They're federally chartered, and I can't set up my own bank, I'm forced to use a regulated entity.
Wrong. ESTA is not a visa, it's a requirement for all travelers to US.
The visa-waiver program (VWP) doesn't include the right to work. You need to have an appropriate visa if you're being paid (or given material benefits) while travelling in US.
Things like interviews or conferences or workshops are not included in the right to work requirement.
The Asian high tech companies have a history of falsely claiming US workers just aren’t smart enough to do the job when in fact what they really want is to have their own workers come in and work triple overtime at slave wages. It was a huge issue with the TSMC build in Arizona.
If they brought people in to do construction work on either tourist visas or B1 meeting type visas that’s illegal and should be and what happened here makes perfect sense.
Of course enforcing pro-labor laws against multinationals isn’t exactly what this admin is known for, so it’s probably a fuck up. But until we know the details we don’t know.
It is pretty obvious now that the Korean sub-contractors thought they were above board on the proper visas for the consulting work that was being contracted. Now, whether that was actually true or not will take a few years of litigation to figure out, since visa law is complicated. If they were doing custom specialized work (that is definitely allowed by ESTA/B1), then the visas were correct. If they were hammering nails into wood, then the visas were incorrect. See https://apnews.com/article/south-korea-us-georgia-raid-hyund...
Not only that there's a long history of asian high tech conglomerates taking shortcuts on these kinds of projects:
https://prospect.org/labor/2023-06-22-tsmc-semiconductor-fac...
Including this specific one:
https://www.enr.com/articles/60802-third-fatality-recorded-a...
So maybe, maybe not. The fact that the attorneys for the accused deny it isn't exactly dispositive.
I'm also pretty sure we are screwed in manufacturing because our labor is just too expensive and unskilled/unproductive to justify the price. But that is another issue entirely.
They prefer to setup factories overseas because they like paying lower wages.
Productivity in the US is incredibly high. Our decision to allow manufacturing to be shipped overseas is a political one.
We don’t have to care what companies feel like doing. We have the customers and the money. We can insist.
You are using “euphemism” as a euphemism for “dysphemism”. (Or, more likely, just using the wrong word; I doubt you are really intentionally trying to put a positive spin on it.)
So if hookers are working the streets, the hammer does not fall on them and will fall on their pimp instead? The cops will just let them go?
The law does not work the way you think it does.
Same thing happened with Trump in the hush money scandal. The guy who transferred the money (the lawyer) was at fault. The only reason by which they came after trump was that the books did not record the transfer truthfully, and did so falsely.
Your boss telling you to violate the terms of your visa doesn't mean you get to do that. They violated their visas, so they get kicked out.
I had mistakenly confused them with the multi-national Chaebol of the same name that is known for ruthless business competition and making decisions to maximize their own profits and shareholder wealth.
> Why would Hyundai ever open another American plant if that's how their people get treated?
I like meeting people like that, if you were open to sharing how you arrived at this more-complicated-than-normal political ideology, I'd be interested to know more.
We don’t have a party for people like me in the United States any more, we just have two different movements to support corporate hegemony.
And possibly even more corrosive, we’ve just completely stopped enforcing the law against elites. It’s shocking how lawless the world has become, from securities fraud to labor violations to bribery.
I believe there should be strict labor laws that leads to safety and high wages and that multinational companies should not be allowed to evade them to exploit workers.
For most of history that’s just a classic pillar of the progressive left. And by the way it’s almost certainly a majority opinion in this country. The fact that it seems like an alien point of view is a reflection of how completely off the rails the modern political discourse is.
Well, right, then, this is a leftist position, but that's why I was surprised that you supported any action at all against the workers who suffered the enforcement action. It seems to me the workers are beings scapegoated for right wing propaganda while the ownership class will continue to not suffer any consequences.
> The fact that it seems like an alien point of view is a reflection of how completely off the rails the modern political discourse is.
Yes, I sympathize with leftists in the USA. I can't imagine a more alienating environment. The disconnect between the political system + media, and the actual on-the-ground feelings of the people there, is just incomprehensibly vast.
Raiding a huge multi-billion dollar project run by a globally important company, and effectively shutting down a project like this at least for awhile, is absolutely not how enforcement actions are usually done.
There's a huge distinction between doing stuff like this and picking up people trying to day day labor in Home Depot parking lots. It's unfortunate that the individual workers are the ones in handcuffs but at the end of the day if you're going to have rules that stop people from working illegally someone is going to have to be able to show up and remove people working illegally from a job site. If you rule something like that out you don't have laws at all.
Doing this to a powerful company is not normal. That's what makes this situation so unusual and interesting, and why I'm arguing in this thread against people that seem to be making knee-jerk reactions based on who's involved.
An ESTA or B1 visa lets you attend business meetings. How do you draw the line between “work” and “meeting”?
A sibling comment to yours [1] describes a situation where moving office chairs from one meeting room to another was considered union work. How are Korean experts supposed to know you shouldn’t do that when attending a meeting or you risk being thrown in jail for violating your visa?
That’s an extreme case, but it illustrates that this isn’t some clear-cut case of knowingly doing work that wasn’t permitted.
This is a construction site. Do you have a tool in your hand? Then you’re not in a fucking meeting. This isn’t that complicated.
> A sibling comment to yours [1] describes a situation where moving office chairs from one meeting room to another was considered union work. How are Korean experts supposed to know you shouldn’t do that when attending a meeting or you risk being thrown in jail for violating your visa?
How are you supposed to know the laws of any country you visit? Do you have some kind of universal rule you’re applying here? If I don’t know what kilometers are can I get away with speeding in Switzerland?
> That’s an extreme case, but it illustrates that this isn’t some clear-cut case of knowingly doing work that wasn’t permitted.
The details here seem to be in short supply but if they were acting as construction workers or even foreman on tourist or B1 visas what they were doing is clearly illegal. Hyundai is a multi billion dollar company they’re well capable of knowing and following US labor laws. If they can’t they have no business building a factory in the US obviously.
But with that caveat there are straightforward allegations of violations of well established US law here. The comments about breaking nitpicky union rules are intended to distract from that fact.
a. (U) An applicant coming to the United States to install, service, or repair commercial or industrial equipment or machinery purchased from a company outside the United States or to train U.S. workers to perform such services. However, in such cases, the contract of sale must specifically require the seller to provide such services or training and the visa applicant must possess unique knowledge that is essential to the seller’s contractual obligation to perform the services or training and must receive no remuneration from a U.S. source.
b. (U) These provisions do not apply to an applicant seeking to perform building or construction work, whether on-site or in-plant. The exception is for an applicant who is applying for a B-1 visa for supervising or training other workers engaged in building or construction work, but not actually performing any such building or construction work.
I agree the terms of the visa explicitly did not allow for applicants to perform construction. And they are accused of doing construction work.
This means the State Department would issue visa cancellations and the company would get sanctioned. Instead ICE went ahead and arrested the employees. That is full overreach. Visa cancellation had not been issued.
Why would Hyundai fly that kind of workers from across the world?
They raided a construction site, not an office building. What do you think they were doing there?
What do you think they were doing there? Having a 300+ person “business meeting”?
I'm just pointing out that no, the photos really do not say much about their work.
If they were practicing architecture in the US without proper work visas it would be illegal.
What kind of visa do they need to get? Please be very specific.
I’ve had L-1 and O-1 visas to the US in the past. Those were complicated processes that took many months and cost over $10k in legal fees each time. Those visas are explicitly meant for multi-year stays, not just work site visits. But is that the type of visa the architect should get for this business trip? If not, then what?
The laws are written out and there's lots of precedent. The point I'm making is if there's 300 people with hard hats and hi-vis vests that say "mechanic" on them (to name one example I saw in a video of the raid) there's a pretty reasonable chance they're very clearly on the wrong side of visa law.
If there were any tiny detail wrong, it would be revealed.
And I say all this as a Korean. This article is politically biased rather severely.
The "completely" is going quite far given the treatment of them. They could be sent a notice ordering to stop work and leave. Or the employer could be told to start applying for visa updates or else. It's not like a skilled Hyundai worker on a temporary international work assignment is likely to run away and start an undocumented life in the US instead. It was a completely unnecessary show of force that also cost more than sending a few letters.
I'm glad there's some small way the US people benefitted from this action. Overall it's insane; did they try an ultimatum with lawyers, and an agreement to send everyone home, before sending in the helicopters?
It's the company that's at fault and should be the target of enforcement; do that and the employees have no reason or desire to stay in the US.
One ought go after them, but instead it's the workers that will take the blame, and leadership will go business as usual. You can't say that higher-ups didn't know what was going on, getting them there.
They are being punished for the leadership of US.
As a sidenote, the fact that this happened in the middle of tariff negotiations with South Korea probably was used as leverage to get more for the US, so Hyundai is probably going to get heat from the South Korean government over this gaff.
> Christi Hulme, president of the Savannah Regional Central Labor Council, said unions that are part of her council believe Korean workers have been pouring cement, erecting steel, performing carpentry and fitting pipes. “Basically our labor was being given to illegal immigrants,” Hulme said.
So far in the US, most labor unions have generally been fairly left-wing, including being pro-immigration. Wonder how long that will last.
If you're a union that is largely concerned with preserving jobs and privileges in a shrinking industry, then there is a pretty good chance that you are going to be quite opposed to non-union immigrants coming in and "taking your jobs."
If you're a farm-worker union with a growing membership of immigrants, more concerned about adding new members and organizing than with preserving previous wins, you may be quite in favor of more immigration.
The line up against which leftist ideology fails to cohere with capitalism. Labor unions are a leftist concept but their goal is to uphold worker's rights against Capital (corporations or whoever can swing money around, like lobbyists), a pretty stark Marxist concept. However another thing Marx pointed out is that capitalism is virulent - it will industrialize a country, lift out the working class to middle class and create petit bourgeois, and then move elsewhere to seek new forms of cheap labor. What does your local union do when that happens?
I suppose this is why it was always "Workers of the World" not "Workers of Local 816," but so far as I can tell there's not much organization across international worker's groups outside of explicitly communist groups that are basically clubs, not actual unions with any power.
It’s worthwhile for any foreigner to look around and see if they want software unions because without a doubt you will be outnumbered by domestic workers who will immediately turn on you the moment they don’t need you.
And here are some Asians, in detention because of a labor union. As anyone could have predicted.
Everything is dumb, but i think this is the worst. Who thought it was a good idea?
And the US union workers agree with this? Even if they were doing illegal work, they cheer seeing fellow workers getting in chains and publicly humiliated i guess? Because of course that's the workers fault their company told them to go work there? Are they dumb?
Sorry i really like your country (well, The Appalachians and the Sierras) but wtf are you doing?
Although maybe they would cheer if it were plasterers, but that's because they all belong to jail (according to construction painters at least).
Why is the public humiliation necessary? The cuffing and even detainment is already too much for people with clean papers imho, but you also have to post their picture on social media to make the world understand how you treat workers in your country, that's the reason?
"Your company is foreign and do bad things, if you come here, you'll be cuffed detained and shown to the world as an example" do not seems very USian, Statue of liberty and all, all the lines about justice and "fair punishment", but i'm updating my priors seeing that most of you seems to agree with that.
https://www.ft.com/content/c677b9aa-2e89-4feb-a56f-f3c8452b3...
And they would feel betrayed because their bosses probably told them it was ok.
I'm certain mistakes were made, by everyone, but how do we draw the line between breaking the law and not breaking the law?
That last part is a very, very good point. It's possible nobody ever told them. Which means the managers and the people who run the plant should be the ones in handcuffs.
Neither. The laws are enforced based on how which group is affected. For example Elon also stayed in the US technically illegally, but he won't get handled the same way.
As for why they're pissed off, that seems obvious. If say Australia wanted to have a software engineering office, invited my employer to set up an office, my employer sent me over there to do something related to that telling me it was in accordance with the law, and then the Australia government arrested me, threw me in jail, and posted videos of this all over social media, I would be pissed off too.
I understand why they did this (H1B is painful and a B1 visa may have been the only way to get people to train American factory workers), but it’s not like they were completely innocent. South Koreans were still treated with a lot more respect and dignity than almost any other ethnicity has been.
South Korea is essentially a U.S. vassal state, so there’s an expectation that ICE wouldn’t be as brutal to them as say, if they were Venezulans.
1. All these plant construction deals have due dates both on paper and off the paper. Build these by x date kind of deal in order to get x amount of support or tax cuts or regulation burden eased etc in these states. So these companies are trying to build these things ASAP.
2. Also these due dates are off the paper. When new leaders come in at federal, state or municipal, it always carries risk that some things will change and construction of it becomes difficult. Projects of this scale can be scrutinized and delayed to death because they are "illegal" because it can't fully satisfy million lines of legal clauses. It is possible because the political climate allows it. Even from Korea side, imagine new regime comes in from Korea side that tries to build ties with China, and they say we are reducing ties with US and you should ease development etc. These companies are then in negative by order of billions.
3. So time is of essence.
4. H1B would be the visa to get for these workers but it is gamed to death and these workers can't get them in time.
5. So both America side, and Korea side agree in an underhanded way to agree that these workers can come into work, build the plants and train the local workers ASAP.
6. Look at the recent interview by Trump where he even admits it is expected that workers need to come in fast to build these plants. So he's understanding of the situation. He's been a builder for his life. He know projects of these scale require a green light from the authority to work.
7. Trump is likely using this incident as a bargain chip for trade negotiations or ICE accidentally going pitbull on an unintended target
If Google, or Hyundai, get special privileges and resource investment from the state, the state should have an ownership stake in these companies. This is known to most countries and isn't particularly controversial.