Browse Cases

Workers engaged in conflict with their employers, the YH wig making
company, as early as 1975. Since the founding of the company in 1966,
the executives had hired employees at very low wages, siphoned funds to
America, and illegally fired workers. The workers in response formed the
YH labour union in May 1975. While the union won some concessions, the
company started struggling with business over-expansion and debt later
that year, which prompted mass layoffs. Finally in April 1979, the
company announced that it was closing down. It listed its debt, losses

On 10 May 2012, Hyundai Motor Company and its union in South Korea began negotiating the terms of a new labour contract. Among other demands, the union demanded higher wages, an end to overnight shifts, and transition of all temporary workers to permanent positions. Negotiations stalled in the following months and finally collapsed on  28 June. Hyundai Motor company union subsequently called for a vote on holding strikes, and confirmed these plans on the 4 July, with an approval of 82.1% of its voting members.

Since the Jung Hee Park regime seized power in South Korea through a military coup in 1962, the government’s economic policy had grown more pro-market and anti-union. Because of its large economic success (in terms of large economic measures like GDP) the public sentiment toward his economic policy was supportive enough to sustain it. Many people adhered to Park’s political narrative of a “growth-first ideology” at the cost of sacrificing labor rights.