(Bloomberg) -- Isidro Arellano thought he’d found a good thing when recruiters showed up at Mexico’s Universidad Tecnológica de Torreón looking for engineers interested in career-enhancing jobs in the auto industry in the US South.
What the 26-year-old said he got instead was a job lugging steering columns and installing bumpers, logging 60-hour-plus weeks at a Kia assembly line in West Point, Georgia.
“I expected to work in an office, like I was used to in Mexico,” Arellano said from Mexico, where he returned last year after being fired, he said, for complaining about what he describes as a bait-and-switch. “I expected to attend meetings with executives, in an environment that was friendly. I expected what I was promised, what I signed up for.”
Arellano is one of nine Mexican engineers who are plaintiffs in a federal racketeering lawsuit against KIA, an affiliate of South Korea-based Hyundai Motor Group, and Hyundai Mobis, the company’s parts supplier. The Mexican nationals allege they were lured to the companies’ assembly lines by Korean-led labor brokers dangling professional jobs that didn’t exist.
The lawsuit highlights an ongoing battle between business and the US agencies charged with enforcing labor and other laws, including the role of third-party staffing companies in enabling alleged abuse.
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