Amid Falling Demand due to COVID-19
Wage negotiations in GM Korea are scheduled to start soon and the other automakers in South Korea will follow suit. The talks in GM Korea are for the year of 2019. Unionized GM Korea workers and the management failed to reach an agreement last year and the talks will be led by new executives of the union.
Kim Sung-kap, the union’s new leader, said early this year that the workers and the management are two groups that can prosper together. His remarks have implied that the militant union is changing from within.
Uncertainties still remain though. The company recently said that it would shut down its logistics centers in Changwon and Jeju. The workers are dead set against the measure, and they can bring up the issue during the upcoming negotiations.
In Hyundai Motor, where wage negotiations came to a peaceful end for the first time in eight years last year, unionized workers and the management are preparing to cooperate closely with each other with the ongoing spread of COVID-19 increasingly affecting the company as a whole. In the company, the first meetings for yearly wage negotiations have been held in May in most cases. This year, the two sides are going to wrap up the negotiations as early as possible in view of the seriousness of the coronavirus situation.