Construction deaths, injuries at Hyundai’s Georgia EV plant draw scrutiny

At least two of more than 15 serious construction-related injuries have resulted in emergency airlifts to a hospital trauma center 30 miles away in Savannah, based on public records, since vertical construction began at the Metaplant in January 2023.

The frequency and types of accidents raise concerns about safety oversight and the pace of construction, according to workplace experts.

Credit: Justin Taylor/The Current GA

Credit: Justin Taylor/The Current GA

Nearly 20% of workplace deaths in the U.S. happen in the construction industry, where statistically about 1 in every 10,000 workers die each year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. On the Metaplant campus, with between 2,000 and 8,000 construction workers at any one time, three workers have died in less than two and a half years.

Hyundai has experienced as many fatalities as 12 other major auto and EV battery construction sites combined since 2010 across Georgia and neighboring Tennessee, South Carolina, and Alabama, based on government records.

The South Korean automaker says it has acted to curb accidents. Steps have included a site-wide audit, reviews of safety procedures for affiliates and establishment of a governance committee headed by a chief manufacturing officer “to ensure that our strict safety standards are met and to provide a forum for continuous learning and improvement,” a Hyundai spokesperson said through a prepared statement.

Hyundai Motor Company CEO José Muñoz flew to Savannah following the March death to host a town hall at the Metaplant, where he stressed a “safety first” mindset and said cutting corners in any type of work on the Hyundai campus is unacceptable.

Still, six safety experts, asked if the site’s accident rate was outside the norm, said they were troubled by the safety record at the $7.6 billion EV complex, the largest economic development project in Georgia history.

Brian M. Kleiner, director of Virginia Tech’s School of Construction and a construction safety expert, said the rash of “grotesque and traumatic injuries and fatalities” is “emblematic of a project with a less than adequate safety culture.”

Added Kleiner: “There are lots of indicators that would suggest either the general contractor does not have a safety culture or is not driving it down to the subs.”

Credit: Courtesy Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America

Credit: Courtesy Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America

Safety environment draws regulatory scrutiny

Hyundai acts as its own general contractor, with a subsidiary and affiliates tasked with overseeing and managing projects.

Hyundai Engineering America built the six auto assembly-related facilities on the site. The still-under-construction battery plant is a joint venture between Hyundai and LG Energy Solutions, and the general contractor is an entity formed by those two partners. Hyundai-affiliated companies serve as controlling contractors — those responsible for a project’s planning, quality and completion — for production equipment installation in the finished and unfinished buildings.

Concerns about the Hyundai Metaplant are not new. In an investigative report published in August 2024 by The Current, a coastal Georgia online news organization, an unnamed former safety manager described a “chaotic” job site where some workers didn’t wear hard hats and other basic safety equipment and where safety orientations were brief.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a federal regulatory agency under the Department of Labor, has investigated 13 safety issues on the Hyundai campus. OSHA issued citations in five incidents, with three more accidents, including two of the deaths, still under review.

The fines from those citations total $144,294. Hyundai affiliates were cited in two of the five closed cases, meaning OSHA investigators determined they failed to initiate and maintain safety programs to prevent or address hazards.

Falls account for more than a third of all construction accidents nationwide, according to OSHA, and three of the eight cited or still open for investigation at the Metaplant fit that description.

But other incidents involved forklift safety; improper use of personal protective equipment, including around live electrical connections; and failure to cut and lock out power to machines when maintenance is being performed.

The accident trend is unusual, with repeated safety issues on a construction site typically resulting in greater diligence, according to Jim Stanley, a former deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Labor, the agency’s highest-ranking nonpolitical appointee.

“Based on what’s happened, there is a culture change that needs to occur on the project, and it doesn’t appear that it’s occurring,” said Stanley, who now works in the private sector as president of FDR Safety Solutions, a firm that specializes in safety staffing, consulting, training and expert witness services.

Credit: Courtesy of HMGMA

Credit: Courtesy of HMGMA

Balancing safety with schedule goals

Construction on the Hyundai Metaplant campus has happened at “full throttle,” as one local economic development leader described it in early 2024. Test production in the assembly and manufacturing buildings began less than 18 months after the first piece of framework rose from the site. EV production launched at the 20-month mark, three months ahead of schedule.

The pace was frequently cited as a positive by Hyundai officials, including Muñoz, as the company aims to introduce 23 new EV models and manufacture 1.44 million battery-powered cars annually by 2030.

Meeting or beating a construction schedule often contributes to safety issues, Virginia Tech’s Kleiner said. He cited the dangers experienced during construction of the MGM CityCenter in Las Vegas nearly two decades ago. Six workers died in separate accidents over an 18-month period to build the 67-acre casino, hotel, retail and residential center with a New Year’s Eve target for completion.

“They had schedule driving construction and as a result had about 50 times the historical rate of fatalities,” Kleiner said. “You often see pockets of accidents in those situations.”

Hyundai did not respond directly to a question about whether rapid construction contributed to safety issues. In its written statement, though, the automaker stressed safety “is our highest priority” and that it “has maintained full compliance with applicable federal, state, and local laws and regulations.”

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

Deaths lead to scrutiny

OSHA’s reports in the two deaths at HL-GA Battery this spring are pending, although both investigations are listed as complete.

In the March 21 death, a worker named Sunbok You was struck by a forklift and dragged at least 10 feet. Photos obtained by a Savannah TV station, WTOC, show the worker’s body was severed at the waist, with his upper body left laying in front of the forklift.

In that fatality, OSHA expanded the reviewed parties beyond the forklift operation subcontractor, SBY America, to include another subcontractor and the Hyundai-affiliated controlling contractor.

In OSHA’s investigation into the falling load accident that killed Kowalski on May 20, the forklift subcontractor, Heavy Lift Inc., is the only party currently listed as being reviewed by regulators.

Credit: Hyundai Motor Group

Credit: Hyundai Motor Group

SBY America and Heavy Lift did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Hyundai avoided regulatory penalties and largely escaped public criticism in the fatal 2023 fall of steelworker Victor Gamboa, who was employed by Eastern Constructors, a subcontractor, to help build the vehicle assembly plant.

OSHA cited Eastern Constructors for “plain indifference and willful violation” when the investigation found Gamboa was wearing worn, damaged and inadequate fall protection gear that sheared on the edge of a steel beam, resulting in him falling 60 feet to his death.

“Eastern Constructors’ failure to protect its employees from the leading cause of death in the construction industry are inexcusable and resulted in tragic consequences,” OSHA’s Savannah-area office director at the time of the accident wrote in a report.

But the investigation also reflected badly on the Hyundai-affiliated general contractor for hiring a subcontractor with a well-documented history of safety issues. Gamboa was the fifth Eastern Constructors employee to die on the job since 2016, and the Hyundai accident resulted in the subcontractor being added to OSHA’s Severe Violators Enforcement Program focusing on repeat safety offenders.

Eastern Constructors, which did not respond to a request for comment for this article, was fired and banned from the Hyundai site following the OSHA investigation. Hyundai said in a statement that it made changes to its subcontractor screening process in the wake of Gamboa’s death “to ensure all are upholding our safety standards.”

Given the accident types, the three deaths on the Hyundai campus should have been preventable, said Afshin Pourmokhtarian, a professor specializing in construction site safety at Boston’s Wentworth Institute of Technology. Falls from heights, safety around moving equipment such as forklifts and the handling of crush hazards are safety issues commonly addressed in safety standards training, he said.

“The site is massive, one of the biggest I’ve seen, and there must be dozens of subcontractors, which makes it tough to enforce safety,” he said, “but that should not be an excuse.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify the job title of Hyundai Motor Company CEO José Muñoz.