SEOUL (Reuters) - When workers at South Korea’s Hyundai Motor (005380.KS) went on strike last year, the stoppage lasted 24 days, triggered months of negotiations and netted them their smallest raise in nearly a decade.
FILE PHOTO: A worker works at an assembly line before unionised workers attend a strike at a main factory of Hyundai Motor in Ulsan, about 410 km (256 miles) southeast of Seoul, July 13, 2012. REUTERS/Lee Jae-Won/File Photo
This week, after just two days on strike, their powerful union agreed to a deal before the summer holidays, the first time in eight years that has happened.
The agreement gives workers a smaller raise than last year’s $14,000 in bonuses and wage increases, union officials said, declining to provide details. It had sought a 5.3 percent increase in wages, a request it reduced to 2.1 percent; inflation in South Korea is about 1.9 percent.
Those relatively small gains, and the speed to which they were agreed, are signs that the union may be softening its stance amid growing criticism, falling profits, the near bankruptcy of GM Korea and potential U.S. tariffs.
Union members endorsed the deal late Thursday, just before the automaker reported its second-worst quarterly net profit since 2012.
“We’re fed up with strikes and feeling a crisis too,” a Hyundai worker in its sprawling Ulsan factory complex, the world’s biggest automaking facility, told Reuters, citing GM Korea’s recent wage deal and trade disputes with Washington.
This year, General Motors’ (GM.N) South Korean unit shut down one of its four plants, cut jobs and agreed with its union to freeze wages, skip bonuses and trim benefits to stem mounting losses.
Hyundai chief executive Ha Eon-tae said during negotiations that a 25 percent tariff -
