SEOUL — General Motors’ South Korean unit said it plans to resume wage talks with its labor union on Wednesday, earlier than expected, as it tries to cut costs at the loss-making operations and keep its factories open.
Wage negotiations were suspended this month after GM said it would shut one of its factories in South Korea and decide the fate of the three remaining plants in the coming weeks — a decision that will depend on the concessions it can wrangle from the unions and the amount of government support it can secure.
The resumption of talks underscores the intensifying pressure on the unit’s labor union to make concessions to prevent GM’s exit from the country, where it employs 16,000 people.
The union, which has been holding protest rallies, had previously asserted that talks were unlikely to resume before mid-March unless its demands were met.
“The union is unlikely to go militant. If they don’t make concessions, this could put other factories at risk,” said Lee Hang-koo, a senior research fellow at Korea Institute for Industrial Economics & Trade.
GM is proposing a base wage freeze and no bonuses this year along with a suspension of some benefits such as tuition for employees’ children and gold medals for long-serving workers.
“We hope to make meaningful progress in future negotiations with our labor union … We see this as a positive signal,” a GM Korea spokesman said of the resumption of talks.
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