hankyoreh

outside Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul during an event to for the Tivoli

On Apr. 8, 2009, Ssangyong Motors announced the layoffs of 2,646 workers. That same day, an irregular worker surnamed Oh with one of the automaker’s subcontracting companies took his own life. The following May 27, another worker surnamed Eom dropped dead from a cerebral hemorrhage. The same day, the Ssangyong chapter of the Korean Metal Workers’ Union held a press conference in front of Ssangyong’s factory in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, to plead with the company not to “drive hundreds of thousands of workers and their families to their deaths.”

The deaths continued. After incense-burning memorial altars were erected in front of Daehan Gate in central Seoul, after the Sewol ferry sinking took over 300 lives in April 2014, after laid-off Ssangyong workers Kim Jung-wook and Lee Chang-geun climbed on a smokestack at the Pyeongtaek factory on Dec. 13 last year to demand reinstatement, dismissed workers and their family members continued to pass away. The International Workers’ Day holiday on May 1, a day set aside to commemorate the workers of the world, brought news of the death the day before of a 49-year-old surnamed Kim who had been pressured into resigning. It was the 28th death to date.

Just after the layoffs in June 2009, the Ssangyong chapter conducted a survey of the mental health of 284 dismissed workers. The results showed 85% of respondents reporting symptoms of depression. Another questionnaire of 457 dismissed workers and others by Pyeongtaek University in 2011 showed 52.5% answering in the affirmative when asked if they had felt the impulse to commit suicide or commit other “extreme actions.” 70% responded positively when the Hankyoreh posed the same question to 56 laid-off workers in late 2014.

In November 2014, the Supreme Court quashed workers‘ already fading hopes for reinstatement by ruling the Ssangyong layoffs to be “justified.” Today, the alarm continues to signal one former worker after another being driven to the edge.

In the case of the worker surnamed Kim, some hope seemed in sight when Ssangyong sat down with the union on Jan. 26 for the first negotiations since the layoffs. Kim, who had been undergoing therapy for personal issues and psychological suffering, phoned a former colleague to ask about the status. But during the eleventh round of talks on Apr. 28, the company insisted the management situation made it “impossible to discuss a reinstatement date.” Kim committed suicide two days later.

“As long as no meaningful agreement can be reached, there will be other deaths,” the Ssangyong chapter said in a May 3 statement. “This is a situation that demands emergency disaster relief.”

The twelfth round of negotiations starts on May 6.

By Kim Min-kyung, staff reporter

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