Two different unions of OB Beer(Oriental Brewery Company) at three plant locations(Icheon, Cheongju and Kwangju) decided to join forces for a sit-in strike from August 16 in full scale. One union is affiliated to the FKTU chemical union federation and the other union is a local of the KCTU chemical and textile industrial union.
Well before this decision, both unions formed a joint struggle council for the preparation of 2016 collective bargaining with the management on wages and working conditions which started from December last year.
Though over 30 rounds of collective bargaining took place for the past 9 months. little has been achieved. Unions demanded 9.3% wage increase and overtime pay, whereas the management proposed only 0.7% increase which is equivalent to the 2015 inflation rate in Korea.
Unions demand that the underpaid 2015 performance bonus for the employees should be reflected in the 2016 wage hike.
However, OB Beer only follows the wage hike guideline that the AB InBev set in accordance with the changes of the consumer price index(CPI) of the specific country concerned. OB Beer was purchased by a multinational company, AB InBev which is the largest brewer in the world.
Unions call on the AB InBev that the system for co-prosperity between brewers, wholesale stores and supply chains should be established. The dividends for the shareholders should be fixed at 40~50% of the net income for the purpose of distributing fair share of profits to employees, wholesale stores and supply chains.
In fact, OB Beer paid the shareholders the dividends amounting to 370 billion won(US$338 million), more than three times of the net income of 115.3 billion won(US$105 million) in 2015.