Members of the irregular workers’ union of Hyundai Motor Co. shout slogans from the parking lot of the company’s plant in the southeastern city of Ulsan on Jan. 18, 2013, as they hold a rally in support of two irregular workers who are in defiance of a court-issued order demanding that they get down from a power supply post at the parking lot. The two men — one official of the union and the other, a former irregular worker at the automaker — have been holding a sit-in on the power supply post since Oct. 17, 2012, to urge Hyundai give its irregular workers permanent stable employment. (Yonhap)
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2:52 pm on January 20th, 2013 1
Something is off with their facial expressions, not your typical protesting ones… almost… irregular.
5:46 pm on January 20th, 2013 2
Maybe I’m misunderstanding something, but how can they get around the law which makes temp workers full-time employees after 2 years of employment?
5:51 pm on January 20th, 2013 3
2. Fire them after 729 days and then hire them back (or not)? – profit
Legal loopholes? – profit
6:33 pm on January 20th, 2013 4
Obama Green Fleet Shows Ford LOSES to Hyundai Hybrids
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-09/obama-green-fleet-shows-ford-loses-to-hyundai-hybrids.html
President Barack Obama’s administration, which set a goal of buying only alternative- technology vehicles for its fleet by 2015, cut purchases of hybrid and electric models by one-third last year and bought mostly Asian brands.
About 54 percent of the 1,801 alt-fuel vehicles purchased by U.S. government agencies last year were built by Hyundai Motor Co. (005380), Toyota Motor Corp. (7203), Mitsubishi Motors Corp. (7211) and Honda Motor Co., according to data obtained under a Freedom of Information request from the U.S. General Services Administration, which coordinates most vehicle purchases.
The Korean-made hybrid version of the Hyundai Sonata unseated Ford Motor Co. (F)’s Fusion hybrid as the top-selling alternative-technology vehicle purchased for the federal fleet. U.S. hybrid purchases in previous years were made almost exclusively from domestic automakers.
6:41 pm on January 20th, 2013 5
#3,
It was more or less a rhetorical question.
My wife is a non-tenure track faculty member at a university here. She gets fired after each final exam and rehired again a week before class starts. It used to be that she would work for three semesters and be off for one, but they’ve found the hard way that she’s indispensable to them. The one full-time professor who can teach her class is vastly incompetent (my wife suspects her credentials are bogus) and she’s the only faculty member who’s able to communicate with the many visiting foreign professors without creating awkward situations.
7:08 pm on January 20th, 2013 6
So these Korean outfits sort of follow the Walmart business model?
10:42 pm on January 20th, 2013 7
#6,
Basically. The government passed the law making temp workers full-time employees after 2 years of employment to supposedly deal with this sort of abuse. The large corporations have been hiring temp workers for years, stringing them along with the promise they will eventually join the union and abusing the fact by paying them minimum wage (Can you imagine getting paid 2 bucks an hour building cars?). The only thing the law has changed, as you mention in #3, is that the temp workers aren’t strung along for 4, 5, or even 6 years…They are fired a few days short of two years and then maybe rehired again.
11:32 pm on January 20th, 2013 8
7. Sounds about right. Have Koreans figured the unpaid intern scam yet?
1:16 am on January 21st, 2013 9
#8,
I don’t know. With minimum wages being what they are here (roughly 4000 won per hour) and how so many employers don’t even pay their employees that, I’m not sure that’s even necessary.
1:22 am on January 21st, 2013 10
…Another scam is the overtime pay. You actually earn a fraction of your hourly wage for every hour of overtime you make. I thought I was getting ripped off until my buddy, who works for a very important office of the national police, told me he was getting paid only 6000 won per every hour of overtime (Now you know why you see so many police cruisers parked on the side of the road late at night. They are working overtime, and they aren’t being paid enough to care).