[THE INVESTOR] Samsung Heavy Industries workers went on a partial strike on Thursday, to protest the company’s tough restructuring plan.

It marked the first time that a troubled South Korean shipbuilder has faced a labor dispute.


Earlier this week, the group of workers at the company’s shipyard in Geoje, South Gyeongsang Province, voted to launch the strike for four hours till 5 p.m.

Some 5,400 members of the so-called “labor council,” joined the strike. Samsung Heavy, a unit of the country’s top conglomerate Samsung, does not formally allow a labor union.

“The company is pushing for a cut in workforce under the name of an early retirement scheme,” said the council. “We urged the company to withdraw the tough restructuring plan, but it didn‘t.”

Samsung Heavy workers’ partial strike is the first of its kind this year with their counterparts at Hyundai Heavy Industries and Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering set to take similar collective action.

In early June, the KDB accepted Samsung Heavy’s 1.5 trillion won self-restructuring plan, giving it some time to try to ride out the crisis on its own.

The package, approved by its creditors, calls for the company to cut 1,500 jobs this year, sell noncore assets and suspend part of its production facilities, including floating docks, in gradual phases to cope with a fall in new orders.

Samsung Heavy is one of South Korea’s three major shipyards reeling from snowballing losses caused by falling global demand and tougher competition. The Seoul government and creditor banks, including the state-run Korea Development Bank, have called for “bone-crushing” reform efforts, including massive job cuts.

Workers at Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering also approved a strike proposal earlier this week, and Hyundai Heavy Industries’s unionized workers are set to vote next week on whether they will go on a strike.

(theinvestor@heraldcorp.com)