By Ryu Jin
Staff Reporter
Under the slogan ``A World to Move Together,’’ the Hyundai-Kia Automotive Group has been staging various Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities in recent years to become a global leader respected both at home and abroad.
Not only Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors but also other affiliates of the group including the auto parts firm Hyundai Mobis have been engaging in various activities ranging from community chest drives to relief measures in foreign countries.
In particular, Hyundai Motor which has recently reached an agreement between labor and management without a strike for the first time in a decade embarked on a large-scale social contribution project together with executives and employees.
On Wednesday, both workers and management delivered various items of support worth 829 million won ($896,000) to the underprivileged, providing cars to welfare facilities, personal computers to low-income households and daily necessities to the needy.
``I’m very pleased to be here to contribute to the local community ahead of the Chuseok holidays, following the no-strike deal,’’ Hyundai Motor President Yoon Yeo-chul said in a joint ceremony at the company’s Ulsan factory.
Lee Sang-wook, the union head, also promised that the Hyundai Motor union would be reborn as one that would contribute to the development of the local community together with management.
Hyundai-Kia Automotive Group began its CSR activities in earnest from 2004 with a fresh management philosophy of Chairman Chung Mong-koo to ``pursue happiness of humankind through automobiles.’’
In July, the group set a yearly budget of one billion won, largely focusing on contribution to the local community of Ulsan, its main production base in the southern part of the country.
According to a white paper on its CSR activities released last May, the group’s 16 affiliates including Hyundai Mobis and Hyundai Steel spent a total of 258.2 billion won ($279 million) from 2001 to 2006, including 52 billion won spent last year.
In particular, labor and management agreed in the latest deal to increase the money raised for social responsibility activities to two billion won from next year.
The group’s CSR activities range from the simple provision of support to the needy, the spread of a safe transportation culture and promotion of easy and comfortable movement of the disabled, to training human resources and relief efforts abroad.
``In particular, we utilized the characteristics of our businesses to make roads safer for everyone,’’ a group spokesman said. ``For example, we concentrate on the safe and comfortable transportation of children and the physically and mentally challenged.’’
Hyundai-Kia Group is also paying attention to the support for migrant workers in the country and contributions to other foreign countries. In 2004, for example, the group sent various relief goods worth $1.5 million to Southeast Asian countries hit by a tsunami.
Hyundai Mobis, in the meantime, has been an active contributor to society on its own. One of the most outstanding features of the firm is that both labor and management have been jointly engaging in various voluntary activities.
In 2003, Hyundai Mobis systemized its then-rather scattered programs, including the famous ``Beautiful Saturday’’ charity drive, into one under the slogan of the ``Pleasure of Sharing.’’ It even published its own 200-page white paper early this year.
``Our group is an entity well aware of what to do as a `corporate citizen’ in society.’’ Chung, the group chairman, encouraged all executives and employees in May to exert more efforts to be the members of a more responsible business group.
His ``management of sharing’’ will likely be further boosted when concrete plans are drawn up later this year to operate the 840-billion-won ($907 million) donation that he promised as atonement for his criminal conviction.
``We expect that a reasonable plan would be drawn up so that ordinary citizens could share concrete and substantial benefits together,’’ the group spokesman said. ``And we will keep our efforts to be a more responsible group in the coming years.’’