POSCO Seize Ends

Steelmaker to press civil, criminal law suits against organized workers for damages

Labor unions and civil groups have been waging ferocious demonstrations on the streets and at jobsites across the country with the arrival of summer, leaving damages to companies involved. Director Nam Chang-hyun of the Steel and Petrochemical Team of the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy, strongly emphasized that the government will crack down hard on law violators during union strikes at both POSCO and Hyundai Motor.
The Construction Workers Union of the Pohang District voluntarily ended its 9-day occupation of POSCO's headquarters in Pohang July 20. About 7,000 combat police force surrounded the building and were ready to enter the building at any time to shove them out of the building and arrest those responsible. But union members began to walk out of the building one by one breaking off their seize of the building. They put up a violent fight against police forces with flame throwers and pieces of steel pipes.
Police succeeded in arresting 137 labor union members including 17 leaders led by Lee Ji-kyung, 39, chairman of the labor union and they have been turned over for investigation. They are chasing four other labor union officials who escaped from the scene. Police said the leaders and those put up violent resistance will be charged with property damage and violence.
Police said some 2,400 labor union members seized the POSCO building and most of them were allowed to return home, except those who needed to be investigated further their roles in the labor strife.
Chairman and CEO of the steel maker Lee Ku-taek July 21 said that the steel maker plans to charge the union for various damage it received from the violence including the damages to the building, office and plant equipment, which would total around 200 billion won. He emphasized that the company will bring both civil and criminal law suits against the union to show that the national economy cannot be damaged due to such a brutal action
In the meantime, unionized workers at Hyundai Motor have been staging partial strikes at the company's plants for over a month and the car maker said its export shipment of cars has all but been suspended due to the lack of cars to be shipped, with its loss estimated at over 1 trillion won or 74,611 cars in production losses. The damage is four times bigger than 261.1 billion won incurred during the two-day walk out in 2004, company officials said.
They continued that the damage is twice bigger than 579.5 billion won developed during the 11-day salary negotiations with the union last year. The damage this time is greater because the union virtually suspended all production facilities, although it said it was a partial walk-off.
The officials estimated that the loss alone on July 19 amounted to 6,051 cars in production and 81.6 billion won in sales, which is about 90 percent of total daily production of cars and sales, showing that the strike has been close to a 100 percent walk-out. The labor union at Hyundai Motor plants has been on a partial strike for 17 days since June 26, causing huge losses not only to the car maker but also to subcontractors and vendors. Altogether, there are 377 first-level subcontractors and 4,300 second-level ones across the country, which have been hit with production losses of a staggering 610 billion won.
The loss is especially huge for those subcontractors whose production systems are linked automatically under so called "just in time"system with the Hyundai Motor plants because their production facilities have been shut off with the stoppage of the motor company's production facilities.
The prolonged strike forced the car maker to suspend the loading of cars on to ships to transport the cars to overseas markets. The company last loaded the cars on July 19 and it has no cars to load until July 23, although its shipping schedule shows that 80,000 cars should shipped abroad in July alone to North America and Europe. It has only loaded 10,000 cars on ships as of July 19 due to suspended production. nw