hankyoreh

2012 in front of the Supreme Court in Seoul’s Seocho district after union Choe Byung-seung was ruled to be a regular Hyundai worker. (by Kim Jeong-hyo

By Kim So-youn and Kim Kyung-rok, staff reporters

The National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC), which is the judicial organization responsible for making judgments on labor affairs, found that the assembly line at Hyundai Motor, which is the key part of production, is entirely composed of illegal dispatch workers. As a result of this decision, it is expected that there will be a surge in criticism in South Korean society against Hyundai Motor, which had been claiming that the only illegal dispatch was Choe Byeong-seung, a terminated in-house subcontract worker who won his case at the Supreme Court.

On Mar. 20, the NLRC made a decision in the retrial petition filed by 423 eople who had been subject to disciplinary action while working as subcontractors at Hyundai Motor’s Ulsan factory. The claimants were seeking relief from what they described as unfair punishment.

“Of the 51 subcontracting companies, 32 (299 people) were involved in illegal dispatching,” the NLRC said. “Of these 299, 267 had been hired before Jul. 1, 2005, meaning they are subject to the provisions of the former law concerning the protection of dispatched workers. Consequently, they are already employees of Hyundai Motor. It was unjust for them to be disciplined by subcontracting companies, which had no authority to do so.”

In Nov. 2010, After the Supreme Court delivered a ruling on the illegal dispatch work, in-house subcontractor workers with Hyundai Motor organized a strike and a sit-in at the Ulsan Factory, demanding that they be made regular workers. Meanwhile, the subcontracting companies took disciplinary action against nearly a 1000 workers, firing 104 subcontractor workers at the factories in Ulsan, Asan, and Jeonju. The workers fought back against this disciplinary action by filing the relief claim with the NLRC.

The most striking aspect of the NLRC’s decision is that the assembly lines in factories no. 1 through no. 4 at the Ulsan facility were all found to use illegal dispatching. Since assembly is the most important process in automobile manufacturing, around 3,800 of the 9,000 total in-house subcontractor workers are working in that area (as of Jun. 2012). Choe, the person whose cause was upheld in the Supreme Court, was also part of the assembly line, in his case the one at factory no. 1.

The NLRC decision, which partially acknowledges that illegal dispatch work is taking place, represents a retreat from decisions by the Supreme Court, which found that subcontracting is impossible in the automobile manufacturing process (GM Korea) and that the automobile manufacturing process, which is based on a conveyor belt system, is illegal dispatch work (Hyundai Motor). However, it is still very significant in the sense that it reconfirms the fact that Hyundai Motor is an illegal dispatch workplace.

“The NLRC has followed the footsteps of the Ministry of Labor and the Supreme Court to recognize that Hyundai Motor has been widely involved in illegal dispatching,” said a statement released on the same day by the irregular workers’ union at Hyundai Motor. “Since the NLRC has judged that Hyundai Motor is the employer, it must regularize the illegal dispatch workers and immediately comply with our demands for negotiations,” the group demanded through the statement.

However, Hyundai Motor is still not admitting that it is involved with illegal dispatch work. “We will rehire 3,500 of the subcontractor workers as regular employees by the first half of 2016,” said Hyundai Motor co-CEO Yoon Gap-han through a statement released on Mar. 18. This implies that the company will not admit the illegal dispatching, considering that the action promised here is not equivalent to regularization. The statement is also viewed as an aggressive threat by the company to push ahead with its agenda regardless of whether management and labor reach a consensus.

While a representative for Hyundai Motor responded to the NLRC decision by saying that “Hyundai Motor will decide on its position as soon as we receive the written decision [a month from now],” it is very likely that the company will file an administrative litigation. The company has already entered litigation in regard to the NLRC’s decision in Jun. 2012 acknowledging that six or nine subcontracting companies at the Hyundai Motor factory in Asan were involved in illegal dispatching.

The NLRC was established to ensure speedy protection of the rights and interests of workers, in consideration of the fact that litigation is time-consuming and very expensive. However, with chaebol ignoring the decisions of the labor relations commissions in this fashion, workers must in fact pass through a five judgment process: judgments by the local labor commission, the NLRC, and the three levels of courts. While labor relations commissions impose a penalty for implementing their decisions, this is hardly a burden for the chaebol. In a case in the first half of 2012 in which a local labor relations commission found there had been unfair disciplinary action, Hyundai Motor paid a fine of 700 million won (US$627,000) rather than regularizing workers.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]