hankyoreh

By Sin Dong-myeol, Ulsan correspondent

“They kept pressuring him to accept a temporary position, saying that if he refused he would have to submit his resignation. They also promised him a two-year contract if he came in as a temporary worker.”

On Apr. 16, Gong Byeon-sun, 62, was explaining how his son, 29, came to work at Hyundai Motor as a temporary worker in Jul. 2012. The younger Gong ended his life two months after he was fired at the end of Jan. 2013 from his position as a temporary contract worker (a form of irregular worker) at the Hyundai Motor factory in Ulsan.

The deceased had been working for an in-house subcontractor in the transmission department at the Ulsan Hyundai Motors factory since 2008. In Jul. 2012, he switched to a temporary contract job under the direct employment of Hyundai Motor on the urging of his employer. At the time, Gong had been working at the in-house subcontractor for 16 months as a regular employee, following 11 months of temp work and one month off.

Gong Byeong-sun insists that Hyundai Motor fired his son in order to avoid the responsibility of converting him to a regular employee.

“My son knew that in about two years there would be a lot of Hyundai Motor employees retiring at the mandatory age. He was hoping that if he could keep working as a contract worker for those two years that he would be regularized,” Gong said. “But after he had been working there for two years total, including his time at the in-house subcontractor, Hyundai decided to let him go after his year-and-a-half contract expired.”

The elder Gong had retired at the mandatory age from Hyundai Motor at the end of 2010 after serving for 33 years and 10 months as a regular worker in the no. 1 engine department.

“After my son was fired, he would just play computer games in his room or leave the house by himself without saying a word,” Gong said. “Occasionally he would shake with emotion yell about his betrayal, asking how Hyundai could have done this to him. After he started his temporary contract, all he did was work diligently, not taking a single day off of work, and never refusing overtime.”

On the evening of Apr. 14, Gong’s son hanged himself in his house in the Ok neighborhood of the Nam district of Ulsan, where his body was found. Ten people, including family and friends, held a funeral service for him at Ulsan Sky Park on Apr. 16.

“From the time that my son started working at the in-house subcontractor, I kept him from joining a labor union,” the father said, his eyes red from crying. “I told him that if he made enemies because of the union, it could make things worse for him and also cause problems for the company.”

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