hankyoreh

Dec 16

South Korea’s court of appeals has determined that the mass firing of Cort employees was illegal. The court says that it was an injustice for the international guitar company that had enjoyed ten year’s worth of profits to fire its workers en masse due to a single year’s worth of losses. The laborers have been fighting for their reinstatement for 2 years and 4 months.

The Seoul High Court ruled against the complainant on August 13, and said that because Cort is not in an urgent financial situation it is throwing out the company’s lawsuit against the National Labor Relations Commission, which has ordered the company to reinstate the employees.

The court said, “Cort suffered losses for the first time in 2006, however, it had enjoyed profits until that year, and because the market share the company holds in the world guitar market remains at 30 percent, it seems that it has not lost its competitiveness.” The court also said, “The company’s debt ratio of 37 percent is relatively lower than that of the industry’s average debt ratio of 168.35 percent.”

The court added, “Workers that remained have been compensated for overtime work, and managerial wages, including the president’s salary, increased after the mass firing.” The court concluded, “Based on these facts, we rule that the mass firing was illegal.”

Cort enjoyed profits totaling 80 billion Won between 1996 and 2007, despite suffering a loss in 2006. In April 2007, the company fired 56 of its employees out of its total workforce of 160 and had cited a 0.85 billion Won loss in 2006 as the primary reason.

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