Word: hyundais
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Facing a crowd of labor negotiators last week, Chung Ju Yung shouted the traditional Korean cheer for long life. Mansei! was an appropriate chant for the farm boy turned industrialist. He had just agreed to a settlement that would spark his $14 billion-a-year Hyundai Group back to life...
Plagued by the same labor disputes that have crippled the South Korean economy over the past month, Chung had refused to meet with his employees' newly formed unions and promptly shut down seven of his conglomerate's 24 companies. Among the shuttered enterprises: Hyundai Shipbuilding & Heavy Industries, with 24,000 workers, and Hyundai Motor, with 23,000. More than 60,000 employees in the southeastern city of Ulsan were locked out. Trying to rally near one factory, 20,000 workers clashed with riot police. A day later, 40,000 strikers and supporters staged a twelve-hour demonstration in and around...
...prospect of the country's second largest conglomerate's shutting down indefinitely stirred Seoul into direct action. Hyundai produces the Excel, a subcompact popular in the U.S. and one of the most potent symbols of South Korea's economic coming of age. Though Chung denies that he caved in to government pressure, he admits that his initial refusal to negotiate was wrongheaded. "I thought they ((the union leaders)) were too young and inexperienced with company affairs to represent all the workers," says the 71-year-old Chung. "After I met with them personally, I found out I had been wrong...
While the government has earned praise for ending the Hyundai crises peacefully, it is wary of mediating again -- especially if that leads to financial bailouts. "The less of it, the better for everybody," says Suh Sang Mok of the Korea Development Institute, a government think tank. Intervening in remaining disputes may also be logistically impossible. At one point last week, the Labor Ministry reported that 485 companies were plagued by labor strife...
Independent labor organizers took advantage of the new atmosphere to spark a series of work stoppages that reached new peaks last week. Assembly lines ground to a halt at the electronics giants, Samsung and Lucky-Goldstar. Earlier, Hyundai Motor Co., producer of the popular subcompact Excel, lost $24 million after it failed to ship 6,000 cars. Though the government is leaving the search for solutions to labor and management, it began to move against the violence prone, arresting two workers for destroying an auto-parts factory and three fishermen for wrecking equipment in a Pusan market. Warned Labor Minister...