From the US to Japan: How the world’s strongest auto unions are dealing with job losses in the electric car sector
In Japan, leaders of Toyota Motor Corp., the country’s largest employer with nearly 381,000 workers, are grappling with how the automaker’s technological transformation will affect not only its employees but also the country’s vast auto supply chain. (Photo: Bloomberg)
By Gabrielle Coppola and Heejin Kim
The threat to jobs posed by the transition to electric vehicles is not only a hot topic in the US, where the presidential election campaign is in full swing.
In Japan, executives at Toyota Motor Corp., the country’s largest employer with nearly 381,000 workers, are grappling with how the automaker’s technological transformation will impact not just its employees but also its vast auto supply chain and the thousands of jobs it creates.
In South Korea, the steps of Hyundai Motor Co. and Kia Corp. towards electrification raises similar concerns in that country’s very active and organized labor movement.
Hyperdrive spoke in Seoul last week with officials from the Korean Metal Workers’ Union, which represents about 180,000 auto workers, including about 70,000 at Hyundai and Kia, the country’s two dominant manufacturers.
The union, founded in 2001, is negotiating a new annual contract for Hyundai’s auto assembly workers and is threatening to strike over disagreements over future staffing plans and sharing proceeds from Hyundai’s record 2023 profits.
The conflict is reminiscent of the six-week strike between the United Auto Workers union and the Detroit Three automakers last fall.
Last week was also the week that at least 23 people, mostly migrant workers from China, died in a fire caused by explosions at a lithium battery factory south of Seoul. The fire at a factory owned by Aricell, which makes products for industrial and military applications, was the worst accident at a battery factory in the country’s history. In response, the government has formed a task force to improve fire safety measures across the sector.
We asked union officials, including Policy Secretary Kim Sang Min and Executive Director of International Hyewon Chong, how they are dealing with challenges such as job losses due to electrification and automation, as well as safety risks as EV battery production increases. The conversation, which was in both Korean and English, has been edited for length and clarity.
How do you see the battery fire at Aricell? Lithium-ion batteries are a key component of electric vehicles and those killed were mainly migrant workers hired by an outside company.
We need to review safety management systems in light of the incredible risks. If a company wants to hire temporary, outsourced workers, they need to have a safety management system for those people.
Aricell is a subsidiary of S-Connect and there was an external recruitment agency for the factory workers. These types of systems prevent employees from coming into contact with each other and make it easier for employers to monitor them. We are trying to respond to this trend.
Hyundai is pushing electrification, building EV factories in South Korea and the US, and a new, highly automated factory in Singapore. What does this mean for your members?
The visit to the Hyundai plant in Singapore made us realize that it will be difficult to keep our jobs. So we are trying to demand that companies create new jobs related to green industries. It is something we are really thinking deeply about and investigating which demands will really make a difference. We have to admit that we do not have a silver bullet.
Dealing with this only at factory level would not be enough to address what is happening in society. If we limit our view to within the factory walls, it appears that jobs are being reduced. On the other hand, there are also employees who will build robots.
What does that look like in practice?
In 2021, we signed an industrial transformation agreement with employers in the Korean metal industry. This year we’re focusing on supply chains, a plan called ‘just transition’, where automakers take overall responsibility for achieving carbon neutrality in their supply chains.
We need to develop clusters and strategies for different regions for different subsectors. A consultation framework needs to be created so that the local community and the companies and the unions can find strategies to realign their economic production towards something that is needed, something that will continue employment in a sustainable way.
South Korea’s labor force is shrinking as postwar baby boomers retire and companies increasingly hire migrant workers. How do you communicate with this new generation?
We publish newsletters in different languages to provide information they need to know, such as how to calculate Korean basic wages. Removing discrimination against migrant workers is one of the three key issues we want to negotiate with companies this year. We also try to help them standardize their employment contracts, because migrant workers sometimes need special clauses, such as ways to improve their living conditions in accommodations.
And is Gen-Z interested in joining the union? In one of your newsletters, a union member said that young people today have “a weaker willingness to fight” against management.
Gen-Z and millennials still make up a very small portion of the metalworkers union population, and the average age of union workers is rising. So it’s true that demographic trends are making younger people less vocal than older generations. There are some biased perceptions that younger generations don’t have much interest in labor disputes and tend to focus on their own interests.
But we are seeing some newly formed unions by younger workers and they are showing actions we didn’t see before, such as scuffles with gatekeepers at factories. They try to do something different than the older generation.
First print: 01 July 2024 | 9:22 am IST