韩国职员接受减薪而保饭碗
Koreans Take Pay Cuts To Stop Layoffs 2009年3月4日Shinchang Electrics Co. offered union leaders a proposal that would reduce wages at the auto-parts company by 20% in exchange for no layoffs among its 810 workers this year. Eight days later, the union agreed.
The deal is one sign of the unusual way South Korea is grappling with the global economic crisis. Across the country, executives, salaried employees and hourly workers at companies from banks to shipbuilders are joining to slash wages and other costs with the goal of avoiding layoffs.
'We have to go through this together. We are colleagues and friends,' says Shim Ho-yong, a seven-year employee who molds ignition components for Shinchang. 'If one disappears, it's awkward and uncomfortable.'
The global recession has been marked by a steady onslaught of layoff announcements around the world. Even in Japan, once the home of lifetime employment, big-name firms like Sony Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp. have eliminated tens of thousands of jobs in recent weeks.
In South Korea, job preservation is the government's biggest goal in shaping its response to the onset of recession, President Lee Myung-bak declared in January. Last week, leaders of major industry groups, unions, civic groups and government ministries struck a 'grand bargain for social unity.' Under the plan, which isn't legally binding, employers won't fire workers, unions will accept wage freezes or cuts, and the government will provide tax breaks to companies that preserve jobs.
The handshake deal raises the question of whether South Korea can survive the global recession while hanging on to traditional views about work, which include a deep aversion to layoffs. The country accomplished one of the great economic miracles of the 20th century with government-led development that embraced centuries-old notions of putting community ahead of individual achievement.
Until the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, laying off workers was illegal, in large part to preserve that deep sense of community. And even during that crisis, which South Korea weathered better than most countries, layoffs only happened when companies collapsed -- not when they were trying to save costs, as is happening in much of the world today.
Some other countries and companies are also attempting to stave off massive job cuts by asking workers to scale back hours, take pay cuts or schedule time off without pay. Last week, Ford Motor Co. Chairman Bill Ford and Chief Executive Alan Mulally agreed to take 30% cuts in salary for two years to help win union support for capping wages. In Canada, a United Steelworkers union of nearly 600 salaried employees agreed in January to a four-day work week to avoid layoffs.
However, no place seems to be making such a coordinated national push as South Korea. It's too soon to tell precisely what the country's no-layoff drive will produce, whether a viable means to cope with recession or a mere delay of painful job cuts.
Economic indicators -- led by a sharp drop in exports, which account for nearly two-thirds of the country's gross domestic product -- show that South Korea is on the verge of its worst downturn since the country industrialized in the 1960s. Today's global recession is likely to hit South Korea harder and longer than the Asian financial crisis did largely because of the disintegration in the exports market. Companies' survival may ultimately hinge on the ability to cut jobs.
'If exports continue to fall, companies will either have to take a loss or they will have to make a hard decision,' says David Eldon, a former chairman of HSBC Holdings PLC, who served on an economic advisory committee to South Korea's president for the past year.
South Korea's unemployment rate hit 3.6% in January, compared with 7.6% in the U.S. and 4.1% in Japan. Job growth turned negative only in December.
A major factor behind the push to save jobs is avoiding the acrimony and violence that occurred when South Korean companies attempted layoffs in the 1997-98 crisis. At that time, the International Monetary Fund and others loaned South Korea about $60 billion. The loans required the country open its stock market and banks to foreign investors, lift constraints on currency trading and reduce corporate debts.
It also forced South Korea to change the layoff law to allow healthy companies -- or more importantly, the foreign investors who would take over poorly performing Korean companies -- to restructure as they saw fit.
韩国职员接受减薪保饭碗
韩国汽车零部件公司Shinchang Electrics Co.不久前向工会领导人提议，工人减薪20%，作为交换，资方今年不对公司810名员工实施裁员。八天之后，工会接受了这一计划。
这个协议是韩国以非常手段应对全球经济危机的一个迹象。在整个韩国，从银行到造船商，各个行业的管理人士、正式雇员以及小时工都接受降薪和削减其他成本，旨在避免裁员。
在Shinchang工作七年的Shim Ho-yong说，我们必须共度难关，我们是同事和朋友。如果有人被辞退离去了，那会令人不安和难过。他为公司铸造点火器部件。
Yonhap 韩国各界达成了共度难关的非限定性协议，以减薪
代替裁员。此次全球经济衰退的一个特症就是全球范围内持续不断的大规模裁员。即便在日本，像索尼公司和丰田汽车这样曾实施终身雇佣的老牌公司，也在最近几周削减了数万个工作岗位。
韩国总统李明博1月份宣布，在应对开始出现的经济衰退的各种措施中，维持就业是政府最重要的目标。上周，重要工业组织、工会、民间组织和政府部门的领导人达成了一项“社会团结大协议”。根据这项没有法律约束力的协议，雇主将不会实施裁员，工会将接受薪酬冻结或降薪，政府将为维持就业的公司提供税项减免。
这一友好协议引发了疑问：韩国能否在坚持绝不轻易裁员等传统工作理念的情况下，安然度过这次全球性衰退。韩国政府主导的经济发展成就了二十世纪最伟大的经济奇迹之一。在发展中，政府倡导一个延续几百年的传统理念，即应将集体利益置于个人成就之上。
直到1997年-98年的亚洲金融危机之前，在韩国裁员还是非法的，这很大程度上是为了维护韩国高度的集体感。即便在危机期间，韩国公司也只会在倒闭之时才辞退员工，而不是像当今全球许多地区那样为了削减成本而裁员。与大多数国家相比，韩国更好地应对了那场危机。
其它一些国家和公司也在试图要求工人接受减少工时、降低薪水或无薪休假，以此避免大规模裁员。上周，福特汽车董事长比尔?福特和首席执行长穆拉里同意接受减薪30%的要求，为期两年，以推动工会接受限制薪酬的条件。在加拿大，一个包括将近600名正式职员的联合钢铁工人工会组织今年1月同意每周工作四天以避免裁员。
不过，似乎没有其他地区在推行类似韩国的全国性协调措施。至于韩国的不裁员运动会带来什么成效，它到底是应对衰退的可行手段，还是只不过在推迟令人痛苦的裁员的到来，这些问题现在要准确判断还为时过早。
各项经济指标显示，韩国正处于上世纪六十年代工业化以来最为严重的衰退边远。占据韩国国内生产总值将近三分之二的出口，下降幅度尤为明显。眼下这场全球经济衰退可能会比亚洲金融危机给韩国带来更为严重和持久的冲击，出口市场的瓦解是其中主要原因。公司能否生存可能最终就取决于裁员的能力。
汇丰控股前董事长艾尔敦说，如果出口持续下滑，各家公司要么被迫承受损失，要么就必须作出艰难决定。过去一年来，他在韩国总统经济顾问委员会任职。
今年1月韩国失业率上升至3.6%，同期美国和日本分别为7.6%和4.1%。就业增长在去年12月才陷入负增长。
促使韩国挽救就业的一个重要原因，是爲了避免像1997年-98年危机中韩国公司试图裁员那样引发激烈反应和暴力事件。当时，国际货币基金组织及其他机构和国家向韩国提供了大约600亿美元的贷款。贷款的条件是韩国向海外投资者开放股市和银行，取消外汇交易限制，降低企业债务。
贷款协议还要求韩国调整裁员法律，允许健康的公司──或更为重要的，可能接管经营不善韩国公司的海外投资者──能够放手进行重组。
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