59% of Voting Members Approve
Successful Completion Within the Year for 3 Consecutive Years
The labor and management of HD Hyundai Heavy Industries concluded this year's wage and collective bargaining negotiations on the 21st, including a basic salary increase of 130,000 KRW. With this, the labor and management have successfully reached an agreement within the year for three consecutive years.
The HD Hyundai Heavy Industries Labor Union is counting the votes of the strike approval referendum held for union members due to difficulties in this year's wage and collective bargaining negotiations at the Ulsan headquarters on the 24th. Photo by Yonhap News
The HD Hyundai Heavy Industries Labor Union announced that in the second tentative agreement vote for the 2024 wage and collective bargaining, held among all union members (6,656 members), 3,664 out of 6,192 voters (voter turnout 93.03%) approved the agreement with 59.17% in favor. This tentative agreement includes a basic salary increase of 130,000 KRW (including step increments), an encouragement bonus of 4.7 million KRW (including 500,000 KRW in gift certificates), and an increase in the Lunar New Year and Chuseok homecoming allowances to 700,000 KRW each.
Since the initial meeting on June 4, HD Hyundai Heavy Industries labor and management had been unable to narrow their differences, and although the first tentative agreement was prepared on the 6th of this month, it was rejected in the union vote. Subsequently, to reach an agreement within the year, both parties immediately resumed negotiations and prepared the second tentative agreement on the 19th. The approval of the second tentative agreement is attributed to a 1,000 KRW increase in the basic salary raise compared to the first agreement and a 200,000 KRW increase in the encouragement bonus.
Among shipbuilding companies this year, HD Hyundai Heavy Industries is the only one to raise the basic salary by 130,000 KRW. During the negotiation process, the union conducted 24 partial strikes, and physical clashes occurred between labor and management at the site, deepening the conflict. However, both sides agreed that to turn the recovery trend in the shipbuilding industry into a full-fledged boom, negotiations must be concluded promptly and efforts combined, leading to the agreement within the year.
Thus, labor and management have completed negotiations without carrying over into the next year for three consecutive years since 2022. A representative of HD Hyundai Heavy Industries stated, "The union and its members seem to have understood well and made a decisive decision that now is a golden opportunity for the shipbuilding industry's leap forward, with orders increasing significantly," adding, "All employees will work together to accelerate performance improvement."
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