The owners of a LaGrange auto parts factory and a Calhoun flooring and surface material plant are the latest Georgia companies to be accused in federal court of exploiting skilled Mexican engineers in violation of labor and equal rights laws.
Two class action lawsuits filed in recent weeks in an Atlanta court allege Mexican engineers and technicians were lured under false pretenses to work underpaid menial jobs at Sewon America Inc.’s manufacturing facility in LaGrange and at the Calhoun plant operated by LX Hausys America Inc.
Georgia staffing companies Total Employee Solution Support LLC and CL Global LLC are accused of being part of the scheme to falsely recruit Mexican workers under a federal visa program for skilled Mexicans and Canadians.
The civil lawsuits follow at least five others lodged in the Atlanta federal trial court in recent years alleging university-educated Mexicans employed through the Trade NAFTA, or TN, visa program have ended up on production lines working long shifts for little pay.
“These Mexican workers are being targeted,” Rachel Berlin Benjamin, a lawyer for the workers, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “The companies (sued) are making connections with universities in Mexico that educate engineering folks. There’s very much a target on our clients’ backs.”
Sewon, LX Hausys and the Georgia staffing companies did not immediately respond to inquiries about the latest complaints, filed March 15 and 25.
Total Employee Solution Support, based in Braselton, Georgia, has been sued at least three times before over the same alleged conduct. Two lawsuits claiming it recruited skilled Mexican workers for blue-collar jobs at an Alabama auto parts factory settled in January following mediation.
In another case, the Kia manufacturing plant in West Point, Georgia, was accused alongside Total Employee Solution Support and others of running a similar scheme. That case, filed in August 2022, remains pending as the defendants seek to dismiss the claims against them.
Columbia Recycling Corp. has also been sued over its use of Mexican TN visa holders at its facility in Dalton. The company’s attempt to end the lawsuit at the earliest opportunity was denied in November.
Berlin Benjamin and her colleague Brian J. Sutherland are part of a group of attorneys representing Mexican workers in the different cases. Sutherland said immigrant workers are among the most exploited groups of people in the United States.
The latest cases claim violations of Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act as well as federal labor and equal rights laws. They seek relief for about 300 Mexicans employed under the TN visa program at the LX Hausys and Sewon factories in Georgia since March of 2018 and 2019, respectively.
“Our clients allege a fraudulent scheme that is both systematic and coordinated,” Sutherland told the AJC. “That’s the basis of the claims under the Georgia RICO Act.”
The three named plaintiffs in the Sewon case claim they were promised full-time engineering jobs with annual salaries of $36,000 plus benefits. Instead, they say they worked on assembly lines for up to 17 hours at a time, while paid less than their American counterparts and denied proper overtime compensation.
Sewon, a subsidiary of South Korea’s Sewon Group, has operated in Georgia since 2008 and supplied auto parts for Hyundai and Kia for more than 13 years, according to the complaint. The lawsuit alleges Sewon is in the process of opening a new manufacturing facility in Georgia’s Effingham County, where it plans to create more than 700 new jobs.
In the LX Hausys case, two Mexican engineers said they ended up quitting their jobs in the Calhoun plant, where one worked on a production line for kitchen countertops and the other operated a crane to pour powders into containers. Both men had been promised full-time engineering jobs with annual salaries of $35,000 plus overtime pay and benefits, according to the lawsuit.
The Mexican engineers were paid $14 an hour and made to work long shifts while their American counterparts received at least $18 an hour and enjoyed 40-hour working weeks, the complaint states. It says Alpharetta-based LX Hausys, a subsidiary of Korean company LX Hausys Ltd., has about 3,000 staff at its Calhoun location.
Berlin Benjamin and Sutherland said each skilled Mexican worker typically spends hundreds of dollars applying for a TN visa and undertaking associated travel within Mexico and to the United States. Many find that the suits they purchased to work as engineers have to be replaced with clothes appropriate for manual labor, the attorneys said.
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