Humanoid robots are usually not taking Hyundai manufacturing facility jobs in South Korea but, however employees are already preventing for cover earlier than they will.
Hyundai Motor staff staged a three-day partial strike after wage talks stalled. Alongside calls for over pay and retirement, the union desires ensures towards job losses and decrease revenue because the automaker prepares to make use of Atlas humanoids in manufacturing facility work.
Should employees wait till humanoid robots arrive to barter protections, or safe them whereas deployment continues to be being deliberate?
Workers stroll out after wage talks fail
Production employees stopped work for 4 hours every day from July 13 by way of July 15, with day and night time shifts every ending two hours early.
Union negotiators are searching for:
- A month-to-month base-pay improve of 149,600 received, or about $100
- Performance pay equal to 30% of the corporate’s 2025 web revenue
- An improve within the retirement age from 60 to 65
- Job and revenue ensures tied to AI and manufacturing facility automation
Management proposed an 89,000-won month-to-month increase, a efficiency bonus value 350% of base pay, a further 10 million received, and 15 firm shares, however union leaders rejected the provide.
Automation has added a much bigger subject to the corporate’s normal wage negotiations.
More than 34,000 of Hyundai’s roughly 40,000 union members licensed industrial motion as negotiators sought assured employment and dealing circumstances associated to AI, based on The Korea Times.
Atlas is headed to factories, however not but in South Korea
Atlas was developed by Hyundai-owned Boston Dynamics and is scheduled to start working on the group’s Georgia manufacturing facility in 2028. The automaker says the humanoid will initially deal with components sequencing and different repetitive or hazardous work. No deployment date has been introduced for South Korean vegetation.
A a lot bigger rollout is deliberate. Hyundai Motor Group intends to deploy greater than 25,000 Atlas robots throughout Hyundai and Kia amenities and to construct an annual manufacturing capability of 30,000 models by 2028. An in depth timeline and listing of factories haven’t been launched.
Union leaders worry large-scale deployment will scale back the variety of folks wanted on manufacturing strains as Atlas robots tackle extra duties. Workers have warned of an “employment shock” and wish protections agreed earlier than humanoids turn out to be a part of common manufacturing facility operations.
“Not a single robotic” ought to enter workplaces with out an settlement between labor and administration, the union warned.
What employees ought to safe earlier than humanoids arrive
Workers are proper to take the chance severely. Humanoids can repeat assigned duties for lengthy durations with out fatigue, and employers don’t pay them wages or time beyond regulation. Maintenance and supervision nonetheless price cash, however giant deployments can scale back demand for human labor.
South Korean manufacturing facility employees at Hyundai and staff in different robot-heavy workplaces ought to ask for particulars earlier than deployment. Find out which duties will transfer to machines and whether or not shifts or time beyond regulation will shrink. Ask whether or not retraining or reassignment will protect present pay.
Put these commitments in writing by way of union agreements or office insurance policies. Keep data as soon as deployment begins, particularly of schedule adjustments and time beyond regulation cuts. Workers have extra leverage whereas humanoids are nonetheless being deliberate than as soon as decreased hours and redesigned roles turn out to be the norm.
Mitsubishi’s Kyoto plant could turn out to be a manufacturing base for humanoid robots constructed to work alongside folks.
