Bloomberg News Service
SEOUL — About 400 Daewoo Motor Co. union workers clashed with riot police in the car maker’s main plant in Bupyong near Seoul to protest the bankrupt South Korean company’s firing of 1,750 workers over the weekend.
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| Riot police tried yesterday to avoid burning tires set ablaze by laid-off workers to prevent police from ending a four-day sit-in at the Daewoo Motor Co. factory.
Associated Press |
More than 2,000 riot police surrounded the plant to block more union workers from getting in, and hundreds of others entered the plant to break up the workers’ gathering, said Kim Jeong Soo, another company spokesman. Local police ordered the riot troop’s entry in hopes of stopping the strike, which the government declared illegal.
The protests come as creditors are trying to get the automaker to shed staff and cut costs to make it more attractive to potential buyers. General Motors Corp. and Fiat SpA have been studying the insolvent company, Korea’s second-largest automaker by production capacity, for the past six months and may be interested in buying some of its assets.
Daewoo Motor has been at odds with the union over plans to eliminate the 1,750 jobs.
Most workers at Daewoo Motor’s other domestic plants continued to work, although the union declared a general strike to protest the job cuts. The company said the protest at the main plant would have little impact on planned output because the company already shut the plant last week. The closure of the main plant, which accounts for half of its annual production capacity of 1 million vehicles, will last for three weeks.
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