Hyundai Heavy Goes Bold With Vacation
By Jane Han
Staff Reporter
If you thought weak work output naturally equates to little or no vacation, take a look at Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI), a company that rang up almost no new orders this year but is still sending its employees on a 16-day paid summer holiday.
No ifs or buts, the world's biggest shipbuilder's entire staff totaling 43,000 ― a majority of them based in Ulsan ― is going to take vacation from July 25 to Aug. 8 all at once, according to company officials.
This is how the super-long break adds up: 10 days for national and bonus holidays, and union establishment day; and six days of Saturdays and Sundays.
This is the longest-ever joint holiday that the shipyard has taken in its nearly 30-year history, after a 13-day vacation taken last year.
``We took into consideration the extreme summer heat that would raise energy costs and hurt employees' health and work productivity,'' said a company official, who added that management decided it would be better to encourage time off, instead of pushing workers forcefully.
HHI employees don't seem to be complaining about the extended holiday, at a time when fresh work has been declining since the end of last year. The shipbuilder hasn't received any new orders in the first six months of this year until it recently won a $250 million order to build an offshore platform.
The slowdown is in line with the down-cycle of the global shipbuilding industry.
But area businesses aren't happy with HHI's generosity toward its employees, as the long holiday is expected to take a direct toll on their sales.
As one of the biggest employers in the industrial city in the country's southern region, HHI has been regarded as a main engine pumping up the local economy.
Businesses estimate that the absence of the large crowd of employees plus their families will remove as many as 150,000 potential consumers from the area during the vacation period.
Plus, just after HHI's getaway is over, other major employers including Hyundai Motor and Hyundai Mipo Dockyard are sending away thousands of their staff for almost 10 days starting Aug. 1.