4 June, 2010While announcing results outlook for the highest operating margins in eight years at their annual general meeting in Paris, multi-billion dollar automotive components transnational Valeo cuts off water and electricity supplies to the Cheonan plant in South Korea where about 100 workers are protesting unilateral plant closure.
FRANCE & SOUTH KOREA: After repeated demands by Valeo Compressor Korea (VCK) liquidator to the Korea Electric Power Company, the main power to the Cheonan plant in South Korea was shut off at 14:00 on June 3, 2010 leaving about 100 Korean Metal Workers' Union members without electricity and without water for toilets, washing and drinking. The Valeo Compressor Korea workers have been peacefully sitting in the VCK plant since October 27, 2009, upkeeping the machinery, cleaning the premises and awaiting the return of management. In South Korea, many are concerned that the unconventional method of cutting off of water and electricity to persuade the workers to give up their claims on Valeo portends further coercive action by the company against the workers in the plant.
It was on October 26, 2009 that the workers, who had come to work as usual, received a phone call from the VCK representative director KIM, Sung-ho around 11 am, notifying that their plant would be closed as of that very same day and liquidated along with his instructions that they go home from work. Because there had been no rumors of plant closure and the company had not approached the union with documentation regarding the financial situation, the workforce was surprised and sat down.
The workers have been sitting down inside the plant 24 hours a day, seven days a week for over seven months protesting this extreme case of union exclusion in the process of going about a plant closure and calling for the company to enter into genuine dialogue with the trade union without preconditions. The lack of prior notice and negotiation breaches the collective bargaining agreement which requires 90 days prior notification and coming to agreement.
The average worker had worked at the plant for 15 years; producing compressors supplied to the Renault Samsung plant and Ssangyong Motor plants in Korea was the first job going into the workforce for almost all the workers. French transnational automotive components maker Valeo, which has facilities in 27 countries with a workforce of 52,000 and does not appear bankrupt or to have stopped supplying the Renault Samsung and Ssangyong Motor plants, only took over the plant in 2005, to subsequently sell its real estate assets, take monthly royalties, take monthly branch commissions and fail to reinvest.
Despite this longer history predating Valeo, the lack of effort on the part of the Valeo Group to disclose the plant closure in advance of the day the plant closed, the failure to search for alternatives and the failure to hold genuine discussions between the trade union and company representatives with authority have prompted some 120 organizations in the local community and nationally to form a "Citizens Countermeasure Committee for the Normalization of the Valeo Compressor Korea Plant".
The KMWU has also sent a delegation of Valeo Compressor Korea workers to France to request talks with the company. The delegation has holding a day and night sit-in in front of the company headquarters in Paris since May 24, 2010 while French unions have supported the workers' efforts to seek genuine dialogue with those with authority in Valeo. All five French unions in Valeo have supported a resolution to support the Korean workers' struggle at the national Valeo works council meeting (Valeo CGE) and the major automaking unions of Europe have also called on Valeo to enter genuine dialogue with the union to find solutions and alternatives (see here).
On June 3, 2010, Valeo Group held its annual general meeting for shareholders at the Palais des Congrès in Paris where Valeo Group CEO Jacques Aschenbroich specified its results outlook for 2010 announcing, "Valeo has set as its objective for the first half 2010 to achieve sales of 4.7 billion, a 35% increase versus the first half 2009, and an operating margin level of close to 6% of sales, the highest half-yearly level for the past 8 years." Meanwhile the shareholders adopted extraordinary resolutions 15 and 16, which reward Mr. Aschenbroich's performance with 100,000 shares of stock options and 50,000 free shares.