Sensing where the winds are blowing, Hyundai factory workers in South Korea have voted to go on strike over fears that they could be replaced by humanoid robots.
The Financial Times reports that the employees, who are members of the Korean Metal’s Worker’s Union, are demanding that they have a say over any attempts at automation and deploying AI. They’re also asking for a performance bonus equal to about a third of Hyundai’s annual profit, which works out to about $27,000 for each of it’s 73,000 workers, according to the reporting.
“We are concerned about job security because of robots,” a union member told the FT. “News reports and videos showing robots becoming more dexterous make workers nervous about the future.”
The workers’ urgency is more than warranted: in January, Hyundai announced that it would deploy Atlas humanoid robots built by its subsidiary Boston Dynamics at the automaker’s Georgia factory in 2028.
At the time, the union vowed that “not a single robot using new technology” would be allowed to work without an agreement. But in May, an undeterred Hyundai revealed the ambitious scale of its plans, telling investors it would deploy more than 25,000 of the humanoids across its vehicle manufacturing facilities.
Echoing a common defense of automation efforts, Hyundai insists that the robots will only handle laborious and hazardous tasks that humans aren’t eager to take on, but the union countered that they would bring “employment shocks,” per the FT.
The Hyundai union hasn’t shied away from threatening to go on strike in recent years over issues like pay, but has largely been able to negotiate deals without a full stoppage. The last full strike was in 2018, the newspaper noted. Their performance bonus demands come as workers at other South Korean manufacturing conglomerate like Samsung negotiated huge bonuses after a windfall of AI profits.
“I think the union understands that many of its demands are unrealistic,” Kim Pil-soo, professor of automotive engineering at Daelim University, told the FT. “But workers are feeling a sense of relative deprivation after Samsung employees got larger bonuses.”
Humanoid robots are starting see more game time in real-world work environments. Last month, Japan Airlines announced it would start using robot baggage handlers at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, one of the busiest airports in the world. China’s state-owned postal carrier has started using humanoids to sort mail.
Automakers are on board with the trend. BMW is currently trialing humanoid robots at its factory in Leipzig, with an executive extolling the “tech as the future of automotive production.”
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