Hyundai and Kia A Tale of Two Companies- Strike or No Strike

Saturday 12:20 am ET

SEOUL August 9, 2003; Dow Jones reported that Hyundai Motor Co.'s unionized workers have voted to accept a wage hike rate and collective bargain deal agreed to by the management and the union leaders earlier Tuesday, said the auto maker's union in a statement late Friday.

At Friday's voting at South Korea's biggest auto maker, 80.3% of 36,685 union members that voted agreed to accept the agreement, said the union. 38,516 employees are unionized out of Hyundai Motor's total 50,000 employees.

As reported, Hyundai Motor agreed Tuesday to provide an 8.6% on-year annual wage increase and to introduce a five-day work week on Sept. 1, to bring the union members back to production lines from the nearly seven-week walkouts. Hyundai Motor incurred more than 1.39 trillion won ($1=KRW1,181.1) of production losses due to the strike. Hyundai Motor resumed operations Wednesday on a normal daily 20-hour working schedule.

In addition to the wage hike, under the accord, Hyundai Motor allows the union to participate in some key managerial decisions, particularly on a job security issue.

Separately from Hyundai Motor, Kia Motors Corp. , an affiliate of Hyundai Motor, said its union is staging a general strike Saturday to threaten the management to accept the union's demands for the immediate introduction of shorter work week and an 11% wage increase.