Hyundai Motor Union Flexing Its Might

Reporters of Dong-A Ilbo visited Hyundai Motor Co. yesterday, one day before its planned strike, and collected as many as 13 newsletters issued by 10 factions within its labor union and the union’s executive branch. Mostly they call for labor liberation and take a hard line.

Their activities are getting more violent because they make competition by presenting hard-line policies in order to obtain hegemony within the union.

The union exerts a great influence in Hyundai Motor Co. and the union executives even proudly call the company a “republic for unions.”

Union chief Park Yoo-ki recently met reporters and said, “We will never disappear because we have as many as 1,000 organized activists who are trained by the union.”

Hyundai’s union, which marks its 20th anniversary this coming July and has 43,000 members, has evolved into a political body that has tens of factions and produces labor activists. It looks more like a party organization than a labor union.

The union has 90 full-time union members and 120 members for education and training committees who are treated as full-time union members. In addition to this, it has 456 union representatives, who are called “red vests.”

A source from Hyundai Motor Co. said, “Many representatives don’t work in the factory now. Therefore, even though a document says that there are 210 full-time union members, we actually have more than 500 full-timers.”

This is a reason why the Hyundai union turns a deaf ear to criticism, saying, “Hyundai’s union only sticks to its hermetic world,” and is going opposite to trends while passing up a win-win partnership.

Last year, the union conducted strikes for 33 days, inflicting 1.6 trillion won of losses (the company’s estimate) on the company, the highest level among local companies. When the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions declared an all-out general strike to resist the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, the Hyundai union was the only one among the nation’s top 30 companies in which all members participated in the strike.

It is deplorable that Hyundai Motors union, which is expected to save the submerging “Korea economy,” is playing a role as a reef that accelerates its decline.

If you closely look at scenes in factories, it is not difficult to figure out why they call the company “Republic for Union.”

Last Saturday, people wearing red vests freely passed by a front gate where others were checked for identification. It is the company’s policy that all workers, from new recruits to high-ranking executives, have to go through this identification check. But, the 500 union executives are the exception.

Even though marking tags with positions was abolished in 1997 at the request of the union, union executives still have them. The red vest, the symbol of the union’s representatives, is regarded as an armband that represents prerogatives. Some workers sneer at this, saying, “A worker’s goal is not to be a master hand, but to be a union representative.”

Under circumstances that hardliners only have a chance to survive, moderates lost their chance to speak out within the union.

K, a former union representative, made a proposal before a negotiation with management last year, which included a compromise to the management. However, he was not able to release this proposal at the union conference because as soon as he began a presentation, hard-line members slandered him and threw supplies like ballpoint pens at him.

The situation is partly fault of the hard-liners, who made a coalition and formed a hawkish executive whenever it had elections. Still, the management’s response is far behind the 21st Century’s ideal management-labor relationship. Each time it had a difficult time, the management just relied on temporary remedies without principles. Now it is doubtful if a principle even exists.

The union’s increasing power even demolished the corporate hierarchy.

Last September, when one union representative entered into an office, the director of a division who was senior to the representative rushed to meet him. Observing this scene, L, vice director then, said that, “Director, who is a senior of the representative, quickly ordered a cup of coffee for him and asked what kinds of cigarettes he liked as flattery. This is our reality now.”