The hiring of construction workers at the Hyundai auto plant in Montgomery is generating complaints by unions and elected officials.
Several hundred protesters gathered at the plant Monday to demand the hiring of more construction workers from Alabama. Union officials said they decided to organize the protest after seeing that about 40 percent of the vehicles at the constuction site had out-of-state license plates.
The unions want more jobs to go to Alabamians because the state provided $252 million in tax breaks and incentives to attract the Korean automaker.
"When we pay our tax dollars, we expect the benefits to go to our neighbors down the street, not our neighbors across the state line," said Tim Cooper, business manager for Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 52.
Hyundai spokesman Bill Lang said the construction work is put out for competitive bid. Rust Constructors of Birmingham is managing the project, and 25 of the 34 contractors on the project, or 74 percent, are Alabama contractors, Lang said.
"All of our construction and equipment contracts require our contractors to utilize local Alabama labor and local Alabama suppliers to the maximum extent possible," Lang said.
Ron Sparks, commissioner of the state Department of Agriculture and Industries, participated in the protest and said he would seek hiring records from Hyundai.
"Let's see their records," the Democratic commissioner said. "Let's go over them job-by-job and hour-by-hour. If they are keeping their commitments, it will show up."
Hyundai's incentives contract with the state says it will consider Alabama contractors, but it has no obligation to hire Alabama firms, said Anita Archie, attorney with the Alabama Development Office, the state's industrial development agency.
State Rep. John Knight, D-Montgomery, handled the legislation that set up Hyundai's incentives package, and he says he wants to see more Alabama workers.
"To the construction company that is responsible for this, I want to say to them as a state official, that if you're not going to be fair to the people of Alabama, then you should be the one paying the incentives," he said.
John Tate, an attorney for Rust, said individual contractors make the decision about which workers to hire.
"We can't dictate to the contractor the qualifications of their employees. But we certainly can encourage them to use local, qualified craft workers," he said.
Monday's protest was the second time organized labor has criticized hiring at an Alabama car plant. During the summer, labor complained about the hiring of Polish workers at the expansion of the Mercedes plant in Vance.
The Hyundai plant is due to open in 2005 and employ 2,000 people.
On Friday, the automaker reached an agreement with bankrupt parts supplier Venture Industries, which has until Dec. 15 to find $100 million to build a factory in Prattville that it agreed to build in February. Financial problems have prevented the Michigan company from starting work on the factory, which is supposed to employ 600 workers.
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