By Kim Tae-gyu
The sit-in strike involving irregular workers of Hyundai Motor shows no signs of concluding because the Seoul-based carmaker has failed to solve the problems through discussions.
The workers, who have occupied buildings at the corporation’s plants in Ulsan since Nov. 15, want to become regular employees of Hyundai Motor based on full-time contracts.
Yet, management refuses to accept the demand while the trade union, composed of regular employees, is also seemingly reluctant to participate in the efforts of their peers.
The lingering strife is not expected to be wrapped up easily without the help of the police as the striking workers’ requests are against a clandestine agreement between management and regular unionists.
Since the nation’s laborers started organizing unions en masse in the late 1980s, companies have realized that they could no longer resort to cheap labor to combat the rise of the unionists.
Making substantial concessions to unionized regular workers, they adopted a brand new strategy of employing in-house subcontractors for job openings caused by regular workers leaving.
It is a kind of win-win solution both for management and labor ― the former can take advantage of workers who they are allowed to fire at anytime by changing the subcontractors while the latter secured good salaries and other perks.
The only losers were irregular workers, who typically do the same job as regular workers for much less.
For example, Hyundai Motor can just switch the problematic subcontractors for new ones as many others line up in order to get into the supply chain of the nation’s foremost automaker.
Instead of treating regular workers well, their trade unions also tend not to take issue with the in-house subcontractors. They can condone the firm’s foul play of ``second-class’’ workers.
Understandably, the unions would not want others to join their ranks since they are not ready to share the pie promised by management.
What the striking workers at Hyundai are asking for is to be made regular workers, which would be very hard to accept from the perspectives of both the company and the union.
Accordingly, the strike at Hyundai could impact on the overall management-labor framework of the country. This severely complicates things.
The 45,000 regular unionists of Hyundai Motor voted Wednesday on whether or not to support the strike by irregular workers and the results will be released late Thursday. The chances are that they will vote against the idea.
Even if they support the strike, they are unlikely to put forth great efforts to help the ``second-class’’ workers, as this may hurt the high salaries of ``first-class’’ workers.
1 | Korea to ease entry rules to boost tourism, domestic spending |
![[INTERVIEW] Can art become stable investment source?](https://img.koreatimes.co.kr/upload/thumbnailV2/d9b4b117e5b74f4c931de724ebd2ee68.jpg/dims/resize/178/optimize)
![[INTERVIEW] Choi Min-sik, Lee Dong-hwi on creating Korean-style noir with 'Big Bet'](https://img.koreatimes.co.kr/upload/thumbnailV2/8b795a8f6b42492db4e8fdc47e9abd8d.jpg/dims/resize/178/optimize)
