Hyundai auto workers in South Korea have started walking off the job over the company's plans to put humanoid robots on the factory floor.
Workers at Hyundai's Ulsan complex — described as the world's largest automotive plant — ended shifts two hours early from July 13 through July 15. Escalating four-hour strikes are planned for July 20 to 22 after 15 rounds of negotiations produced nothing. The friction started when Hyundai Motor Group showed off an updated Atlas robot earlier this year: a six-foot-plus, two-legged machine capable of lifting over 100 pounds. Atlas is built by Boston Dynamics, which is in the process of becoming a wholly owned Hyundai subsidiary.
This is being called the car industry's first factory stoppage specifically over humanoid robots, which puts it in a different category than previous automation disputes — those typically involved fixed-arm industrial robots with narrowly defined tasks. Humanoid robots, designed to move and work like people, plausibly threaten a much broader range of jobs, which explains why the union's response here is sharper than usual.
Hyundai is essentially negotiating with its own workforce over a technology it is simultaneously building and acquiring — a conflict of interest that will get harder to manage the closer Boston Dynamics gets to full integration.