The news that the unions of South Korea’s three major shipbuilders are moving to strike against restructuring plans is truly distressing.

Workers at Hyundai Heavy Industries and Samsung Heavy Industries proclaimed last week a labor dispute with management -- the first legal step for collective action. They said workers will cast ballots soon whether to authorize a strike or not.

The union of the third shipbuilder -- Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering -- had already voted for walkout, with 85 percent of its members supporting the plan.

In all regards, the workers’ strike plans are ill-conceived. The shipbuilding industry, once the pride of the nation, is now the biggest thorn in its side, as the firms’ astronomical losses are inflicting immense damage to the whole economy.

Last year alone, the three leading shipbuilders – Hyundai, Samsung and Daewoo – posted a combined operating loss of 8.5 trillion won ($6.5 billion). The number of orders for new ships remains at a record low and the slump in the global shipbuilding sector is likely to continue for a long while.

This means that without drastic self-rescue measures, the major shipbuilders may go under, and the firms -- under strong pressure from the government and creditor banks -- have drawn up contingency measures, including sales of noncore assets and business units and cuts in workforce.
In general, workers oppose the self-rehabilitation plans, but they specifically targets measures to reduce workforce.

This is understandable -- to some extent -- since unionized workers’ priority should be ensuring job security. But there seems to be more motives -- as seen in the case of Hyundai Heavy.

Its union, which staged a strike in 2014 and 2015 amid the global slump in the shipbuilding industry, said it would stage a walkout in tandem with the union of Hyundai Motor.

Korea’s biggest unions -- especially hardliners -- used to team up when they wanted to press the government or employers not only over labor issues but also political and social issues. The plan by the unions of the two Hyundai firms to hold a joint strike, in this regard, is utterly anachronistic.

The case of the DSME union is more unnerving. Besides the financial crisis affecting all the industry players, DSME is undergoing tough investigation regarding various serious irregularities, including massive book-cooking that covered up its huge losses in recent years.

The crisis led the shipbuilder to draw up a harsh self-rehabilitation plan, for which creditor banks promised to provide a 4.2 trillion-won bailout. The self-rescue plan included DSME union’s pledge that it would not take any collective action until the firm’s normalization.

It was only last October when the union made the promise. Creditor banks have yet to provide at least 1 trillion won of the planned bailout money. They have every right to warn that they will not provide the remaining bailout money if the DSME union goes back on its word.

The government is also right in saying that it would withdraw the incentives it promised in line with the designation of the shipbuilding industry as a sector whose job security is threatened. Obviously, the union has more to lose than it has to gain.