Hyundai Heavy Industries' shipyard in Ulsan / Courtesy of Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering

By Park Jae-hyuk

The lingering labor shortage in the domestic shipbuilding industry has been turning into a legal battle among local shipbuilders, according to industry officials, Thursday.

Samsung Heavy Industries, Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME), K Shipbuilding and Daehan Shipbuilding agreed recently to ask the Fair Trade Commission (FTC), later this week, to punish Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering (KSOE) for allegedly luring their key employees by offering unreasonably high wages.

The nation's antitrust law bans a company from disrupting the operations of its rivals by unfairly luring away or hiring their workers.

"We saw that KSOE has violated the law," a Samsung Heavy official said.

The four complainants argued that KSOE not only offered excessive wages and bonuses to their workers but also promised them additional points in their job interviews and exemptions from resume screening.

"In order to conceal the unfair practices, KSOE asked our core employees to submit their applications during its recruitment of experienced workers," the four shipbuilders wrote in their petition.

They also pointed out that Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) had signed an agreement with Korea Development Bank in March on the prohibition of unfair hiring of workers from DSME, which is currently under the supervision of the state-run lender. HHI is one of the shipbuilding subsidiaries of KSOE, along with Hyundai Mipo Dockyard and Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries.

Around 300 of the four shipbuilders' employees are estimated to have moved to KSOE since last year. Most of them are said to be experts in liquefied natural gas carriers, which have been in high demand due to the global energy crisis.

"We hired all of our experienced workers on equal terms," a KSOE official said. "We have never lured workers unfairly from other companies. We will take countermeasures, once the four companies file complaints with the FTC."

Some industry officials attributed the conflict to mass layoffs done in the mid-2010s to cope with a downturn in the shipbuilding industry. Since then, experienced workers have refused to return to shipyards, causing a labor shortage amid the industry's recent boom.

According to the Korea Offshore & Shipbuilding Association, the number of workers in the domestic shipbuilding industry dropped 54 percent to 92,687 last year from 203,441 in 2014.