Hyundai factory was a deadly job site before it was raided by ICE

Before it became the target of one of the biggest immigration raids in U.S. history, Hyundai Motor’s sprawling auto plant in central Georgia had another reputation among workers: It was a dangerous and deadly construction site.

Three workers have died since Hyundai started construction on the $7.6 billion complex in 2022—an unusually high toll, even for a project of its scale, according to a Wall Street Journal review of federal records. More than a dozen other workers have suffered severe injuries, including from falling without harnesses and getting crushed by forklifts.

Two dozen current and former workers, many of them safety coordinators who helped oversee construction, described in interviews a worksite with many inexperienced immigrant laborers, often lax safety standards and frequent accidents. These workers said Hyundai failed to ensure people were properly trained, and safety regulators did little to prevent worksite violations.

Employees said Hyundai imposed a blistering pace of construction, and that a web of more than 100 contractors on the site complicated efforts to enforce safety standards. In some cases, they said, there was a lack of safety personnel to ensure that workers were performing their duties safely. Construction is ongoing in parts of the complex.

Hyundai’s Georgia factory started producing electric vehicles last fall, a year ahead of plan.

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration and state officials “turned their back and let them do what they were doing," said Greg Dement, who worked on the site last year as a safety manager and said OSHA didn’t respond to his complaints. After more than 30 years in construction, he said, his experience at Hyundai led him to leave the industry for good.

Hyundai, in a statement, said it is committed to following immigration laws and that it doesn’t compromise safety for the sake of speed. The company said it took steps to address safety issues in response to incidents during construction. The company noted that the site’s enormous size makes it one of the largest construction projects in the U.S.

“We acted immediately and comprehensively to prevent anything like this from happening again," Hyundai CEO José Muñoz said in a statement. Following the death of a worker in March, Muñoz visited the factory. “I traveled to Georgia to tell our team directly: Their safety comes before production schedules, before costs, before profits, before everything."

OSHA said it is investigating two deaths at the construction site from earlier this year. The agency has fined six companies that employed people working on the Hyundai project for safety violations. The agency also fined another contractor that employed a worker who died on the site in 2023.

Hyundai’s Metaplant complex represents a big bet on the U.S. market by the South Korean automaker.

The nearly 3,000-acre complex, known as the Metaplant, is a collection of buildings about 30 miles from Savannah. The facilities work as a system to supply the robot-assisted assembly lines pumping out electric vehicles. It represents a big bet on the U.S. market by the South Korean automaker and one touted by Georgia officials. The state gave the company a $2 billion incentive package.

Hyundai’s plans suffered a setback on Sept. 4 when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided a part of the complex where workers were building an EV battery factory. Agents arrested roughly 475 people, including more than 300 South Korean citizens who were later repatriated. The initial targets of the raid were four Hispanic workers, according to the search warrant.

Chad Pilcher, a contract safety coordinator, said he was often troubled by what he viewed as a dangerous combination of poorly trained workers and managers unwilling to enforce safety standards. He said the site employed a large contingent of workers who’d recently immigrated from Latin America, including many who lacked proper documentation.

Pilcher was working last June when one of these recent recruits was electrocuted while working on high-voltage overhead lights, from a scissor lift, without gloves or other required safety equipment. The incident is described in OSHA records.

The man’s heart stopped. Pilcher was among those who came to his aid and remained until emergency crews arrived. The man survived but Pilcher said the near-tragedy still haunts him.

“I voted for President Trump," Pilcher said, making the point that he strongly opposes immigrants entering the country illegally. “But these are human beings."

Factory boom

Hyundai’s race to complete the complex, set to eventually employ some 8,000 people and produce 500,000 hybrid and electric vehicles a year, started amid a U.S. factory-building boom that was driven in large part by automakers looking to expand U.S. EV production and a wave of federal subsidies for battery factories.

Flanked by local, state and federal officials, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp kicked off construction of Hyundai’s complex in the fall of 2022. The state’s economy, Kemp said, was reaching new heights, thanks in part to Hyundai’s massive expansion in the state.

In April 2023, six months after the construction kickoff event, Victor Gamboa, a 35-year-old steelworker, plunged to his death at the site.

Gamboa was placing an I-beam atop the plant’s paint building when he lost his balance and fell. He was wearing a safety line, but the sharp edge of the building’s frame severed the line as he plummeted 60 feet.

Gamboa, a father of five from neighboring Statesboro, Ga., was employed by Eastern Constructors, one of dozens of firms Hyundai hired to carry out work at the site.

Workers were pictured riding in the bed of a pickup truck without restraints in a routine safety report.

OSHA said Gamboa’s death was avoidable and blamed Eastern for failing to provide him with proper safety equipment, accusing the company of “plain indifference and willful violation" of safety standards.

The agency fined Eastern more than $160,000. Eastern contested the decision, and the fine was reduced to $15,625 and classified as a serious violation rather than a willful one, according to federal records.

Hyundai said it removed Eastern from the site last year. Eastern and a lawyer for the company didn’t respond to requests seeking comment.

Weeks after Gamboa’s death, Hyundai paused work and instructed safety personnel to gather at the spot where he died. Managers delivered a lecture on safety protocols and the importance of following proper procedure, particularly when working at heights. The company reviewed its safety protocol.

The following year, in February 2024, the company announced an accelerated timeline for the factory. “We have been moving at a rapid speed," said Oscar Kwon, the factory’s then-president. “Completing a project of this scale on this timeline has been a challenge, but our team has delivered amazing results."

Georgia lawmakers, elated by the news, declared that day Hyundai Day in the state.

‘Part of work’

The factory started churning out cars last fall, a year earlier than planned. Construction continued on other parts of the plant.

11 workers sustained traumatic injuries at the complex in 2024, according to OSHA data. The federal safety enforcer requires employers to immediately report only incidents of lost limbs or eyes, inpatient hospitalization or death. The agency doesn’t yet have statistics for this year.

One man became trapped in a conveyor belt he was working on. It punctured his lung and broke his ribs before he was rescued and raced to the hospital, according to an OSHA report.

Last summer, a worker installing a cable 20 feet overhead, without fall protection, tumbled off and suffered cranial bleeding. OSHA later accused the worker’s employer, contractor Sungwon Georgia, of allowing employees to work at heights without guardrails or safety equipment. The agency fined Sungwon $22,000.

An image showing unsafe electrical wiring at the Hyundai site was included in a routine safety report.

Sungwon and a lawyer for the company didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Migrant Equity Southeast, an immigrant-advocacy group in Savannah, has been tracking labor conditions at the Hyundai complex since Gamboa’s death. Executive director Daniela Rodriguez said reports by workers of accidents are frequent, but many of the incidents aren’t reported to, or investigated by, OSHA. “It had become normalized, that it was part of work" at Hyundai, Rodriguez said.

Some laborers painted a different picture. They said that safety rules were strictly enforced and that workers could be suspended for not following proper protocols. They said they saw co-workers get injured, but they considered such accidents to be among the normal sort of mishaps that occur on construction sites.

Forklift deaths

This spring, two workers died in accidents involving forklifts at the battery factory where the September immigration raid occurred.

A forklift struck and killed 45-year-old Sunbok You in March. Two months later, Allen Kowalski, 27, was killed when a load toppled off a forklift and struck him. An OSHA spokeswoman said investigations into both deaths are ongoing.

Muñoz, the Hyundai chief executive, visited the construction site in March following You’s death to stress workplace safety. The company hired additional safety crew, conducted a complex-wide safety audit and implemented enhanced screening for contractors and subcontractors.

Muñoz said the deaths weigh heavily on him and the company. “These fatalities are unacceptable," he said.

The ICE raid and this year’s worker deaths occurred at the site of a battery factory that is a Hyundai joint venture with LG Energy Solution. An LG spokesman said the company gives priority to safety and doesn’t tolerate illegal hiring or labor practices.

The inordinately high number of fatalities at the Hyundai property is an indication of a lax safety culture, said Ahmed Al-Bayati, founding director of the Construction Safety Research Center at Lawrence Technological University, in Michigan.

He said large industrial projects generally offer fewer hazards than home construction, where the contractors are smaller and less resourced. But the most important factor on any site, he said, are safety rules that are implemented and enforced across all contractors and workers.

Sungwoo Ok worked as a manager for a contractor at the battery factory site. “I just felt like things were not safe," he said. Ok was especially alarmed to see forklifts, which are responsible for a significant number of construction deaths, speeding around, often unaided by required spotters.

“I’d point this out to people and they’d say, ‘This is nothing,’" he said.

Write to Sharon Terlep at sharon.terlep@wsj.com, Amira McKee at amira.mckee@wsj.com and Arian Campo-Flores at arian.campo-flores@wsj.com