By Kim Tae-jong
Members of a labor union visited the Indian Embassy in Seoul, Wednesday, and requested a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to reinstate laid-off workers from Ssangyong Motors, which is now owned and managed by Mahindra & Mahindra, an Indian company.
Singh is expected to come to Seoul later this week to participate in the Nuclear Security Summit 2012. The embassy didn’t say whether he would meet them.
In their request, they expressed their hope to meet the Prime Minister in order to request the Indian government to take responsibility over problems facing ex-Ssangyong workers, who have suffered from severe financial and psychological hardship since massive layoffs in 2009.
“We want the Indian government to be held responsible for illegally and unfairly laid-off workers from the company that an Indian firm now owns,” said Kim Ji-hee, spokeswoman at the Federation of Korean Metal Workers Trade Unions (FKMWTU). “They should be rehired immediately.” FKMWTU is an umbrella group for the unions of automakers.
On Wednesday morning, representatives from the FKMWTU, which the former Ssangyong labor union used to belong to, met with officials from the embassy and asked them to deliver their message to the ambassador while explaining the purpose of the visit. They originally planned to meet the ambassador but he was not available.
In 2009, Korea's smallest automaker sacked about 2,600 workers, most of whom left the company under “voluntary retirement” while some 460 chose to take leave of absence without pay, under the condition that they will return to work when the firm gets back on track.
“We will ask the Prime Minister to help us solve this problem, namely forcing the firm to take action to end the problem,” Kim said. “If it’s impossible to hire the laid-off workers all together, then they should at least try to hire a few of them first and gradually increase the number. I think the firm is capable of doing that.”
But the firm has maintained its stance that they are not yet ready to hire them.
“The company hasn’t got back on track,” a Ssangyong official said. “Our assembly lines have yet to fully operate due to low demand. The firm will hire them back when the plant is busy enough to require two shifts.”
Union workers’ collective action such as a visit to the embassy and boycott campaigns have had negative impacts on the normalization of the firm and consequently delayed the plan further to rehire laid-off workers, he said.
The automaker has shown a slow sign of recovery in sales in recent years, selling 113,001 vehicles last year, up 38.2 percent from the previous year, but has been still operating in the red.
Its sales jumped 32 percent year-on-year to 2.77 trillion won in 2011, but the company posted a net loss at 112.4 billion won, compared with a 26.2 billion won shortfall the previous year
The automaker was acquired by Mahindra & Mahindra, the Indian manufacturer of utility vehicles, in April, 2011, which was aware of the agreement with the ex-workers.
But the delay in the plan to rehire laid-off workers has seen them face hardships due to their prolonged unemployed status, with some even committing suicide in despair.
Unionized workers have long denounced the massive layoff, arguing it was a “different name for murder,” because in the rigid labor market of Korea, it is difficult for older manual laborers to find new factory jobs. For former Ssangyong Motor unionists, it’s even harder as they are labeled the most militant in the industry following the 77-day violent strike against the layoff plans in 2009.