Hanwha Ocean’s conflict with subcontracted workers undermines Lee’s praise

Unionized subcontracted workers at Hanwha Ocean’s Geoje shipyard in South Gyeongsang Province have denounced the company, accusing it of breaking a promise to align the ratio of subcontracted workers’ performance-based bonuses to their base salaries with that of the company’s direct employees — a pledge praised by President Lee Jae Myung in December. After Hanwha Ocean distributed performance-based bonuses ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, the workers claimed the company had continued to discriminate against them. “Unlike direct employees, whose length of service did not affect the ratio of their performance-based bonuses to base pay, the ratio for subcontracted workers varied depending on how many years they had worked at the shipyard,” the workers said in a statement Thursday. “Each of the 4,000 migrant subcontracted workers received a performance-based bonus equal to 46.8 percent of what Korean subcontracted workers with the same tenure received.” The union also said that employees of Welliv, the unit managing cafeterias and other amenities at the shipyard, did not