[Yonhap News Photo]
Workers at South Korea's largest carmaker Hyundai Motor voted for a strike after the company refused to accept demands for a wage increase, bigger bonus payment and other benefits.
The proposed strike won 85 percent of votes cast by Hyundai Motor's 43,700 union members Wednesday. Union leaders called for a four-day partial walkout and no extra work from July 19. The workers will also stage a joint street rally with Hyundai shipyard workers on July 20 in the southeastern industrial city of Ulsan.
Hyundai Motor workers, known for their militant union activities every year, want a 7.2 percent hike in basic salaries, 30 percent of last year's net profit, estimated at 6.5 trillion won (5.67 billion US dollars), as bonus, among other things.
The Hyundai Motor group, including Kia Motors, is the world's fifth-largest carmaker. Kia's 34,000-member union has also called for a walkout. In the first half of this year, Hyundai sold 2.39 million cars globally, down 0.9 percent from a year ago. Kia's sales fell 4.6 percent to 1.46 million.
The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, an umbrella labor group, has called for a nationwide strike on July 20 against a government-initiated labor reform package and what it called "unilateral layoffs" in the country's shipbuilding industry.
South Korea's top three shipyards are under sweeping restructuring led by creditor banks which have struggled to rehabilitate the embattled shipbuilders through the sale of non-core assets and a cut in jobs.
Workers at Hyundai Heavy Industries, the world's largest shipyard, started voting on Wednesday. Their vote will last through Friday.
The union of Samsung Heavy Industries has endorsed a plan to down tools on June 28, while workers at Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering have already voted for a strike.
Aju News Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
