Posco union launches first strike in 58 years amid wage dispute
Posco workers began a partial walkout over wages, but essential operations continue and production disruption is expected to remain limited.
The main gate of Posco's Pohang steel plant in North Gyeongsang on Sept. 9, as the Posco labor union begins a 48-hour partial strike at 7 a.m.
YONHAP
Posco's labor union began a partial strike Wednesday — the first in the steelmaker's 58-year history — after failing to narrow differences with management over wages and other compensation, though the walkout is expected to have little effect on production given the small number of workers taking part.
The union began a 48-hour partial strike at 7 a.m. that day. Under the strike, participating workers will stay off the production line for the strike period.
But the company's blast furnaces did not stop, since core production processes such as molten iron output continue under an essential-work agreement within the union's collective bargaining contract, even during a strike.
Steelmaking is a continuous production system with high interdependence between processes, meaning a halt at any core stage can have a cascading effect across the entire operation.
In this strike, the number of workers participating in the strike is small, so core production processes have kept running, and the impact on production is expected to be limited.
Posco has about 17,000 employees, of whom roughly 10,100 are union members. The union said about 120 workers took part in the strike at the Pohang and Gwangyang steelworks plants combined — about 40 in Pohang and 80 in Gwangyang — while the company estimates participation at only a few dozen, or about 1 percent of union members.
In wage talks held last Thursday, the union demanded a 7.1 percent increase in base pay, an incentive bonus equal to 600 percent of base pay, 50 shares through an employee stock ownership plan and a holiday bonus equal to 200 percent of base pay. The company countered with a 2 percent base pay increase, a 3.5 million won ($2,600) incentive bonus, a 500,000 won regional gift certificate and an expanded range for long-service anniversary bonuses. The two sides failed to reach an agreement. The company has said its operating profit for the first half of this year fell 43 percent from a year earlier, and that the roughly 1.4 trillion won cost of meeting the union's wage demands would amount to about 80 percent of last year's full-year operating profit of 1.8 trillion won — a level it considers excessive.
The union said it would expand the scale and scope of the strike if the company's offer continues to fall short of its demands even after this walkout, and has already announced a second, 120-hour partial strike starting Sept. 16.
"As we had prepared for the strike in advance, there is no immediate disruption to production," a Posco official said. "We will continue communicating with the union to narrow our differences."
BY KO SUK-HYUN [[email protected]]
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
