Problems persist at South Philadelphia railcar plant

The South Philadelphia factory that has fallen far behind schedule in building 117 SEPTA railcars is beset by material shortages, design flaws, inadequate equipment, and culture clashes and poor communication between Korean managers and American workers, according to interviews with workers and complaints filed with the National Labor Relations Board.

African American, Hispanic, and female workers say they are frequently disparaged as inferior by their Korean managers. Some managers have slapped employees, workers say, and a male employee says he repeatedly was grabbed in the crotch by supervisors.

Workers, who are in contract negotiations with manufacturer Hyundai-Rotem USA Corp. after voting to join the Transport Workers Union in August, also contend that wages and benefits are so low that many employees must rely on food stamps and Medicaid.

Jun-Yeon Jeong, manager of the SEPTA project for Hyundai-Rotem, downplayed labor friction and said language barriers were not a major impediment.

"Everybody is doing well, regardless of race or gender," Jeong said. "From my observations, that is not a problem."

He acknowledged cultural differences. He said he was unaware of slapping incidents, and he said he believed the crotch-grabbing incidents represented "a difference of way of expression, maybe."

SEPTA spokesman Richard Maloney said SEPTA officials were aware of the NLRB complaints. "We expect Rotem, and all of our vendors, to comply with legal and social norms. But this is not our issue - it's between them and their workforce down there."

Jeong, who has worked on the SEPTA project for four years, said Hyundai-Rotem "needed to get accustomed to the U.S. market, but we are getting over those issues."

He said the biggest problem was finding skilled workers, and he blamed the lack of skilled employees for many of the production issues.

"It is not so easy to find them around here," Jeong said. "We hired unskilled laborers and trained them. It was not so quick."

About 185 people, hired through two staffing companies, work at the Weccacoe Avenue factory in South Philadelphia, assembling railcars made in Changwon, South Korea. An additional 27 technicians from Korea and 90 local workers being hired now will increase the workforce to about 300, Jeong said.

"We are bringing in more workers from Korea to work on bottlenecks, where we need higher skills, so we can have a smoother process," Jeong said. The company plans to add a second shift to speed the work, he said.