POSCO’s Seoul headquarters/Yonhap News
POSCO’s labor union warned of a possible strike as talks with management remained deadlocked, after a mediation body cleared the way for legal industrial action.
The union said in a statement on the 20th that it had formally requested full-scale wage negotiations with management after the mediation ruling but was turned down. The union said it had reached out first on the 19th, immediately after the ruling, seeking a resolution through dialogue, but that management did not accept.
The National Labor Relations Commission had decided on the 18th to halt mediation in POSCO’s 2026 wage negotiations, concluding that the gap between the two sides was too wide to bridge, at their third mediation session. That gave legal industrial action rights to the union, which had approved a strike with a 92.2% vote among members last month. An actual strike would break a 58-year record of no labor disputes at POSCO since its founding in 1968.
The union said it had formally called on management to hold responsible, full-scale negotiations rather than moving immediately to action after securing the right to strike, saying it wanted to reach an agreement its members could accept and had taken seriously the voices of political circles and the local community. But management declined the request and instead proposed working-level talks, the union said. “With enough working-level discussion already done during mediation and intensive negotiations, repeating working-level talks that carry no decision-making power is nothing but a stalling tactic to delay a decision,” the union said, adding that “it was management that kicked away the last hand extended for dialogue.” Signaling a hard line that it would not seek talks first again, the union warned that the situation was “a strike countdown created by management.”
In this year’s wage talks, the union has demanded a 7.1% increase in base pay, an incentive payment of 600%, 50 shares of employee stock, and a 200% holiday bonus. The union argues that fair compensation is needed because management has neglected employee rewards, citing a downturn, while continuing large-scale investment in new businesses. POSCO, for its part, has balked at the demands, saying that fully accepting them would require about 1.4 trillion won ($1 billion), twice the amount sought a year earlier.