Hyundai Workers Resume Weekend Shifts

Hyundai workers resumed weekend shifts at three of five plants in Ulsan May 25, with all other plants expected to operate this coming weekend, a spokesman tells WardsAuto.

Employees had refused to work 11 weekends in a row, beginning on March 9, due to a dispute over compensation.

The weekend boycott caused Hyundai to lose production of some 83,000 vehicles, valued at 1.7 trillion won ($1.5 billion), the spokesman says.

The three Ulsan facilities that operated last weekend include Plants 2, 4 and 5, producing the Santa Fe, Genesis and Equus, respectively.

Plants that will resume operation this weekend include Ulsan Plant 1 (Accent) and Plant 3 (i30) and Asan (Sonata).

The Hyundai Branch of the Korean Metal Workers Union had agreed earlier to resume weekend work beginning April 27, but rank-and-file union members refused. The workers claimed the workload was too heavy for the amount they would be paid.

They now have agreed to staff weekends for an average 225,000 won ($200) per shift, the spokesman confirms.

The new weekend system involves one 8-hour day shift and one 9-hour afternoon shift. The schedule replaces a single weekend overnight shift of 14 straight hours.

Hyundai will do its best to make up the lost production, which analysts say is the most costly in the auto maker’s history.

Resumption of weekend work is far from the end of the labor problems Hyundai is facing, some analysts say.

In this year’s bargaining the metal workers union is asking for a 130,500 won ($116) average monthly pay increase, which is a uniform demand made of all of Korean auto makers, but with a colossal bonus for every employee.

The union wants Hyundai to give workers a 30% slice of its 2012 record high 9.06 trillion won ($8 billion) earnings. This would be divvied among the 45,000 Korean workers, with a potential individual bonus of 60 million won ($53,000).

More dollars-and-cents demands involve special long-service awards. For instance, the union will ask for a 35% discount on new-car purchases for workers with 30 years of service. It also will seek an award of 56 grams in pure gold (equivalent to $2,700) for workers who reach their 40th anniversary with the auto maker.

The union also wants to modify an existing pact that gives its representatives the right to argue and possibly intervene in management planning for overseas plants. Present language gives the union the right to screen and question overseas expansion only if union jobs will be impacted.

The union wants its representatives to be involved in all overseas new-plant and plant-expansion planning, without having to show the impact on union workers.

Another union aim is to convert Hyundai’s 8,500 contract workers to full-time status.

Several major demonstrations to support this demand have been held in front of Hyundai headquarters in southern Seoul this year. The most recent one, held in mid-May, saw 4,000 temporary workers and union representatives taking part.

Hyundai has said it will give 3,500 irregular workers full-time status by 2016.

Hyundai workers supported by their union also have filed lawsuits against the auto maker seeking an increase in overtime pay and retirement severance pay, retroactive for three years.

The suits get leverage from a 2012 Supreme Court of Korea ruling that bonuses and other payments must be figured as wages in calculating overtime and severance payments.

Similar lawsuits have been filed against Kia and GM Korea.