(Reuters) -Three workers have died since Hyundai Motor started construction of its $7.6 billion auto plant in Georgia in 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing a review of federal records.
Dozens of the company’s current and former workers, many of them safety coordinators who helped oversee construction, told the newspaper in interviews that the work environment involved many inexperienced immigrant laborers, often lax safety standards and frequent accidents.
The plant, which is operated through a joint venture between Hyundai and South Korea’s LG Energy Solution, has been in the limelight since an immigration raid last month that detained hundreds of South Korean workers in the largest single-site enforcement operation in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s history.
Apart from the deaths, more than a dozen workers have suffered serious injuries, including from falling without wearing harnesses and getting crushed by forklifts, according to the WSJ.
The workers interviewed by the WSJ said Hyundai did not ensure that people were properly trained, and safety regulators did little to prevent worksite violations, the report added.
Reuters could not immediately confirm the report. Hyundai did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Hyundai said in a statement to the WSJ that it is committed to following immigration laws and that it doesn’t compromise safety for the sake of speed, adding that the company took steps to address safety issues in response to incidents during construction.
“We acted immediately and comprehensively to prevent anything like this from happening again,” Hyundai CEO Jose Munoz told the newspaper. “I traveled to Georgia to tell our team directly: Their safety comes before production schedules, before costs, before profits, before everything.”
Construction on the electric vehicle and battery plant, located in Bryan County about 30 miles west of Savannah, is ongoing.
(Reporting by Angela Christy in Bengaluru; Editing by Mark Porter)
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