““Costco accused of penalising workers for public holiday absences and intimidating strikers”, say union”, 13 May 2025

(…) Costco is said to have pressured union members by warning that those who did not come to work on public holidays as part of industrial action would be marked as absent. In some cases, workers who had submitted holiday requests were reportedly classified as being absent without leave.

When the union encouraged members to use their annual leave as a form of protest, Costco allegedly rejected those requests and instead recorded their absences as strike action. The company also reportedly issued a document titled “Notice of Caution” to workers participating in industrial action, warning them of potential disciplinary consequences.

The union further claimed that Costco retrospectively altered attendance records by replacing the “unauthorised absence” status with a new code called “non-fulfilment of duty”, which had not previously existed. It described this as an act of evidence manipulation intended to undermine the legitimacy of the strike.

Lee Mi-hyun, head of the Costco branch of the union, said: “Costco workers are not allowed to rest even on 1 May, Labour Day, or on 5 May, Children’s Day.” (…) “We cannot take a rest day on a red-marked public holiday unless Costco says we can. The company stands above the law. When we say we want to rest, team leaders and managers come to intimidate us, and they create a new attendance code called ‘non-fulfilment of duty’ to track us like a blacklist.”

Kim Kwang-chang, president of the Service Workers’ Union, stated: “Costco’s actions clearly constitute employer interference and unfair labour practices. We call on the Ministry of Employment and Labour to launch a prompt investigation and hold the store managers and CEO Cho Min-soo accountable.”