Hyundai has clashed with unions in South Korea over plans to eliminate night shifts at its car plants.
Union chiefs are demanding the carmaker cuts graveyard shifts this year instead of 2013 as originally planned. Hyundai said the request could delay the whole plan.
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Last November, Hyundai said it would end the night shift beginning in 2013, while maintaining the volume of production and total wages paid, adding that it would invest KRW300bn (US$266.9m) in facilities this year.
Under the plan, Hyundai also said it would adjust working hours, increase production during the week and make shifting of production between factories more flexible.
However, the union has dug in its heels, saying the continuation of night shifts through this year is “against our desire to improve the health and quality of life for the workers”. It wants to introduce two eight-hour day shifts in line with a 40-hour week.
The union is also demanding that the company install additional assembly lines to produce 300,000 cars and hire an additional 3,500 people.
Hyundai said the union’s request was inappropriate. External relations manager Han Sung-ho said discussions have been ongoing since 2005 and the company is “perplexed” by the latest development.
The union said the plan was a disguised attempt to increase labour productivity and make retrenchment easier.
Korean automakers are the only ones in the developed world that still operate the so-called graveyard shift. Hyundai has been running night shifts for 40 years. The day shift starts at 8am and ends at 6:50pm while the night shift begins at 9pm and finishes at 8am. If the night shift is eliminated, morning shifts would start at 6:30am and continue through 3:10pm while afternoon shifts would begin at 3:10pm and end at 12:50am.
Hyundai’s affiliate Kia, GM Korea and Renault Samsung also run night shifts. Kia is to experiment with two day shifts from 26 March to 6 April in its Sohari, Gwangju and Hwaseong plants.
