Unionized workers of the South Korean shipbuilding giant that is Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) managed to win a court battle today, according to which HHI is now obliged to count all regular bonuses as base pay, as it was reported by the Yonhap news agency.
Ten of HHI’s workers had filed a suit against the company back in 2014, demanding that regularly paid bonuses are included in the form of ordinary wages.
Yonhap reported that the company’s employees receive 800% of their base salary in the form of various bonuses. The ruling of the court is also going to cover Hyundai Mipo Dockyard (HMD) workers.
HHI’s discussions with labour unions, regarding the matter of the wage and collective bargaining agreement for 2014, have been sidetracked a couple of times throughout the course of 2014.
Unable to reach any sort of agreement led to unionized workers staging industrial action back in November last year, the first of such in almost twenty years.
Yonhap further commented that a second tentative agreement was reached between HHI’s labor and management yesterday in regard to a pay raise, which the union has yet to vote on.
The first agreement proposal did not receive union approval back in early January. According to the agreement a basic pay would’ve been in the amount of KRW 37,000 (USD 33.36), which would have accounted for a 2% increase; it also stipulated a one-off bonus amounting to KRW two million (USD 1,800) and additional company shares worth 1.5 times their total pay.
The workers had issued demands for a 132,000 won pay raise, as well as at least 250% of the base salary in the form of performance-based benefits.
Expectations are that the union will vote on the second agreement this following Monday.