Koreanization hits American ports?

This kind of organized union violence and property damage — orchestrated in part online — is something you would expect to read about a Korean shipbuilding plant, not a port in Washington State:

Hundreds of angry longshoremen stormed through a grain shipping terminal in Longview, Wash., early Thursday and held security guards at bay while descending on a disputed train full of grain, cutting brake lines and dumping cargo.

The predawn labor protests came after a clash with police Wednesday in which hundreds of longshoremen blocked railroad tracks near Vancouver, Wash., to prevent grain cargo from reaching an export terminal 45 miles farther west. In that protest, they far outnumbered officers, pelting police with rocks and spraying them with pepper spray, police said.

There have been no serious injuries, but 19 protesters were arrested on charges of trespassing during the initial protests Wednesday.

Police were not present during Thursday's predawn action at the terminal, but they said six security guards were held inside a guard shack while protesters attacked the train, broke windows in the shack and pushed a private security vehicle into a ditch.

"Yesterday there were probably 300 or 400 of them. Today there was even more, and we were just outnumbered," Longview Police Chief Jim Duscha said in an interview.

"At this point, we hear there are longshoremen coming down from the Seattle-Tacoma area to assist. When the longshoremen were leaving, they were saying they would be back, this was not over," he said.

The call for mobilization hit the International Longshore and Warehouse Union's Facebook page Thursday morning: "Call out the troops, we're going on a road trip!" one union member wrote.

Hey, longshoremen's union, thanks for giving the anti-union Tea Party types ammo in the ideology wars about collective bargaining and labor movements.

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Hyundai in for a rough summer?

Hyundai and Kia are riding high, but Reuters is suggesting that the potential for labor strife may rear its ugly head this month and possibly lead to work stoppages and production slowdowns:

Hyundai's labour union, South Korea's largest, wants a 7.2 percent increase on average in basic salary and a bonus payment equivalent to eight months pay. It also wants preferential treatment for children of its long-time employees when they seek employment by Hyundai.

Last year, Hyundai, which reported record profits, agreed on a wage deal that included a 4.87 percent rise in base salary, performance bonuses amounting to the equivalent of three months salary plus a 5 million won ($4,624) payment, as well as offering 30 Hyundai shares to each employee.

NON-WAGE COMPLICATIONS. Apart from the wage talks, this year's negotiations add a fresh twist. Under a new labour law, Hyundai and its union have been locking horns over cutting the number of full-time paid union organisers and altering a work shift system, the two most contentious issues for the auto industry as a whole.

President Lee's pro-business government implemented a law in July last year that requires employers to limit the number of full-time paid unionists and Hyundai is demanding the union cut the number of full-time unionists to 24, or just one-tenth of the current 235, a call flatly rejected by the union.

Its sister company Kia last year agreed with the union to pay wages to only 21 full-time unionists from the previous 234, putting pressure on Hyundai to agree to a similar deal.

When the unionists themselves see their livelihood threatened, who knows how bad things could get.

With a combined ten percent of US market share, Hyundai and Kia are doing very well right now due to a number of factors — boosts in quality and improvements in style, competitive pricing, greater and more positive brand recognition, and even Japanese automakers' own troubles getting vehicles to the marketplace since the Tohoku disaster earlier this spring — and it would be a shame to squander the strong position the two companies find themselves in.