The Korea Times
As Korea’s export-driven industries emerge from years of turbulence, a new labor conflict is spreading across the country’s corporate landscape: demands by unions for fixed shares of profits as performance bonuses. What began in the semiconductor sector has now expanded into shipbuilding, automobiles, biotechnology, telecommunications and information technology. Labor unions at some of the country’s largest companies are no longer asking merely for wage increases or discretionary bonuses; they are demanding that a set percentage of operating profit or net income be guaranteed to workers as a matter of institutional principle. The trend reflects understandable frustrations. But if left unchecked, it risks undermining the very industrial competitiveness that made these companies successful in the first place. At the center of the latest dispute is HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, Korea’s flagship shipbuilder. Its union recently proposed that at least 30 percent of the company’s operating profit be distributed to employees as performance-based compensation. Similar demands are appea
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