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Another plant worker at Ssangyong Motor was found dead Tuesday in an apparent suicide, police and the labor ministry said Wednesday. The death raises the number of Ssangyong employees and their family members who have taken their own lives or died of work-related diseases since the company announced a massive layoff plan in April 2009 to 18. The 46-year-old worker, identified as Yoon, apparently hanged himself from a tree on a mountain near Anseong Service Area on the Seoul-Busan Expressway, the initial investigation shows. A search operation had been underway since Yoon was reported missing late last month. “He didn’t leave any note before his death,” a labor ministry spokesman said. “We are looking into a possible correlation between his death and the firm’s massive dismissal.” Yoon had worked since 1990 at the manufacturing plant in Pyeongtaek, where the union and laid-off workers held fierce protests for months to nullify the layoff plan. The automaker shut down the Pyeongtaek plant, but workers occupied it. Eventually, riot police entered the plant in July that year in a court-approved action to end the dispute. Unionists shot nuts and bolts using slingshots at police. Management initially planned to lay off some 2,600 workers, but later scaled down the plan under the government’s arbitration and fired about 500 workers. There have been a series of suicides by fired workers and their family members. A recent survey by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions on 193 fired workers showed some 80 percent were suffering from depression and psychiatric problems. Unionists claim that hundreds of regular workers who managed to keep their jobs are also under extreme stress stemming from the loss of their former coworkers. On Oct. 10, a laid-off worker, surnamed Kim, killed himself at his home. Family members said he had been suffering from financial difficulties since being fired in 2009. About a week earlier, a worker at the Pyeongtaek plant also committed suicide in his automobile by burning a briquette with the windows closed. Another former Ssangyong worker was also found dead in May at a plant operated by the automaker’s subcontractor. He had worked at the plant as a temporary worker since he was fired by Ssangyong in 2009. The Green Hospital said in a report in April that about 80 percent of the fired workers desperately need therapy and other medical measures to ease their stress. The chances of them suffering from depression were 3.74-times higher than that of the average person.
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| jj@koreatimes.co.kr |
