Unionised workers at Hyundai Motor plan to stop work for four hours on both the day and night shifts on Thursday over a government meat import deal, the union said on Monday.


The latest labour action follows a two-hour walkout by workers on both day and night shifts on 2 July led by the country’s biggest union, a move aimed at pressuring the government to scrap a US beef import deal, Reuters reported.


Unions are unhappy at the resumption of imports that were stopped in 2003 following a mad cow disease scare in the US.


“We escalated the action as the Labour Ministry and prosecutors said our move was illegal and as the company was not actively negotiating,” Chang Kyu-ho, a spokesman for Hyundai’s union, told Reuters.


The report added that, last week, unionised employees at GM-Daewoo Automotive and Technology  said they would partially stop work for two hours on Tuesday.

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Rallies against the unpopular beef deal, struck last month, have caused a crisis for president Lee Myung-bak’s four-month-old government, Reuters noted.

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