By Oh Young-jin
Staff Reporter
The union of Hyundai Motor defied the management's call for peaceful relations, demanding Tuesday that it stop expanding overseas and guarantee job security.
The union's call comes at a time when Korea's largest carmaker is experiencing a boom with rival Toyota faltering over a series of recalls involving defective parts.
"Job security for our members should be guaranteed by reaffirming the role of domestic factories as the basis for production," the union declared in its 11-point list of demands.
The union elaborated that the role of the union should be protected and its activities left to its own discretion, and called for a more balanced division of profits. Although it didn't offer details, the union indicated that it wants higher wages, better benefits and other factors to improve the livelihood of workers.
The union called its demands a win-win strategy, but it is being taken as a veiled threat to the carmaker that, together with its sister company Kia Motors, is expanding its global outreach.
Hyundai and Kia already have a sizeable production network in the United States, Europe, China and India, among other countries.
The union has long suspected overseas expansion and increasing outsourcing will eventually cost jobs. However, the management, led by Chairman Chung Mong-koo, believes there is no other choice but to go global, in light of the rising wages among Korean workers and the saturated domestic market.
The union has showed signs of restraint when it comes to collective action since the global financial crisis last year, but it is notorious for frequent strikes. Its union is a leading member of the Korea Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), the more militant of the nation's two umbrella groups. The other is the dovish pro-government Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU).
The two carmakers came up with a series of measures during the recession such as offering U.S. buyers the chance to return their Hyundai cars without penalty in case they lose jobs.
Also, its U.S. marketing strategy included an unprecedented 10-year, 100,000 mile guarantee. Some analysts warned that the scheme could hurt the firm in the long run.
However, the union's demands also contained conciliatory elements such as an emphasis on the "coexistence" of the union and management, taking a lesson from the Toyota crisis.