Posco wage talks collapse again as second partial strike looms

Posco and its union resumed wage negotiations on the eve of a second partial strike but failed to bridge their differences, leaving the union set to walk out Wednesday at 7 a.m. for 120 hours as planned.

The two sides held an additional bargaining session Tuesday afternoon at Posco's headquarters in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province, but suspended talks without reaching an agreement. It was their first time back at the negotiating table in 12 days since Sept. 3, yet the core sticking points remained unresolved.

Neither side put forward any position more flexible than its existing demands. The union maintained its call for a 7.1 percent base pay increase, a 600 percent incentive bonus, 50 shares of employee stock, and a 200 percent holiday bonus.

Management has said it cannot accept the union's demands as presented, given a sharp deterioration in profitability in the first half of this year. Posco's standalone operating profit for the first half came to 487.3 billion won ($362 million), a 43.3 percent drop from the same period last year.

The company estimates that meeting all of the union's demands would cost about 1.4 trillion won — roughly equal to Posco's full-year standalone operating profit of 1.47 trillion won in 2024, and equivalent to about 80 percent of last year's annual operating profit of 1.78 trillion won.

With the latest round of talks having broken down, the union is set to begin its second partial strike Wednesday at 7 a.m., running through Monday at 7 a.m. — a total of 120 hours.

The strike will target the No. 2 hot-rolling mill at the Pohang steelworks and the No. 4 hot-rolling mill at the Gwangyang steelworks. Workers operating and maintaining the reheating furnaces will be exempt.

Earlier, the union staged the company's first-ever partial strike on a production line in its 58-year history — a 48-hour action from Wednesday through Friday last week targeting the No. 2 electrical steel sheet mill at the Pohang works and the pickling plant at the Gwangyang works. This time, the union extended the duration from 48 hours to 120 hours — two and a half times longer — and expanded the scope to include major hot-rolling facilities.

Hot rolling is a process in which slabs produced through steelmaking and continuous casting are reheated and rolled thin into hot-rolled coils. The resulting material is sold directly but also serves as feedstock for downstream processes such as cold rolling and plating, making hot-rolling mills the backbone of a steelworks' production chain.

The union has left open the possibility of escalating its action further if negotiations fail to progress after the current strike. The union's strike committee had already instructed members that, depending on how talks proceed and how management responds, it could expand the list of targeted facilities from Saturday onward.