BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS
On July 28 workers in south Korea blocked an attempt by
the Hyundai Motor Company to reopen factories that had been
closed for more than a week.
Hyundai bosses tried to start production at a plant that made the Atoz compact car but gave up after about 10 minutes because union members "threatened to kill them," said Lee Byung Ho, a company spokesman, according to the Bloomberg News service. Atoz cars account for one-third of Hyundai's exports.
Production lines remained idle as 2,600 police surrounded five Hyundai factories in the southern city of Ulsan, according to witnesses. More than 1,000 workers have been living in tents inside the plants since Hyundai shut them on July 20 to avoid clashes with the workers. A plane that flew over the factories July 28 dropped thousands of leaflets by the company urging union members to end the occupations and return to work.
More than 10,000 unionists rallied in Ulsan that morning, vowing to stay away from work and continue the factory takeovers until the bosses scrapped layoff plans.
Hyundai announced in April that nearly 18 percent of its 46,000 employees will be laid off because of a 50 percent drop in domestic car sales this year in south Korea. About 2,700 Hyundai workers subsequently received layoff notices. On July 31 the company dismissed 1,569 employees who had rejected early-retirement offers amounting to 10 months of wages. More than 6,000 workers had already accepted early retirement.
Hyundai had shipped 14,000 vehicles in July and had orders for 33,000 more, according to Lee Byung Ho. It has only 5,300 vehicles in stock, down from an average inventory of 13,000, because of the recent strikes. The company has been operating at only 40 percent capacity, its lowest level ever, as depression conditions have spread in south Korea and the rest of southeast Asia.
South Korea's Gross Domestic Product is expected to decline 4 percent this year. Earlier estimates had put the anticipated drop at 1 percent. Unemployment grew by an average of 2,000 people per day the first half of this year, reaching 1.5 million, or 6.7 percent, by the end of June. By year's end, 2 million workers - 9 percent - are expected to be jobless. This is a result of Seoul's "industrial restructuring" under the terms of the International Monetary Fund $58-billion loan last December. That "bailout" package followed steep devaluations of the won, south Korea's currency, against the U.S. dollar.
Many south Korean companies are now on the auction block, including Kia Motors, one of the country's largest car makers that has declared bankruptcy and that U.S. companies like Ford and General Motors are trying to acquire at bargain prices.