Modern Auto launches the world’s first global “anti-robot” strike, targeting Atlas robots that don’t complain or ask for raises

The negotiations between the Hyundai Motor union and management have broken down. In protest, workers clocked out two hours early after the humanoid robot Atlas went live, which has been described as the first strike in automotive industry history triggered by humanoid robots.
(Background: Hyundai Motor paid $325 million to buy out Boston Dynamics, while SoftBank cashed out and exited to pivot to AI.)
(Additional context: Musk has asserted that pure AI and robotics companies will dominate the future, and humans will become a burden to enterprises.)

Table of contents

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• Protest with two hours off
• The cost of a single robot
• The union doesn’t want a ban

Inside Hyundai’s plant facilities, what makes the union uneasy is a cost projection: an Atlas robot costs about $130,000, and can break even within two years. If the cost is cut to $100,000, the operating cost would likely fall to less than even the U.S. federal minimum hourly wage of $7.25. Workers know they are seated at the negotiating table facing an opponent that never gets tired and doesn’t ask for a raise.

Ulsan’s South Korea plant complex is Hyundai Motor’s largest single production base in the world. Once it stalls, the impact won’t be limited to just one factory’s output capacity—it will ripple through the rhythm of the entire supply chain. This partial strike has therefore been described by The Wall Street Journal as the first time in automotive industry history that workers directly stopped working over the humanoid robot issue.

Protest with two hours off

The union’s dissatisfaction began building from the moment Hyundai Motor Group unveiled the latest version of the Atlas robot earlier this year. Built by Boston Dynamics, this bipedal robot is over 6 feet tall, can lift objects weighing more than 100 pounds, and its agility has already nearly reached human-level performance.

From July 13 to 15, day-shift and night-shift workers at the Ulsan plant ended their shifts two hours early each day, expressing their displeasure by shortening working hours. According to a report by The Korea Times, after both sides went through 15 rounds of negotiations, they still failed to reach an agreement. The union plans to escalate the strike into partial shutdowns of 4 hours each time from July 20 to 22.

It needs to be clarified that this strike occurs before robots are deployed at large scale for real mass production. Hyundai currently has not actually deployed any Atlas in the Ulsan plant, and even the earliest schedule for importing into U.S. facilities is not until 2028. In other words, the union is not protesting after the fact because robots have taken away people’s jobs—it is spreading its leverage on the negotiating table before the robots are rolled out for mass production and go live.

The cost of a single robot

Hyundai Motor’s ambition for robots is far more than a test. According to a report by The Chosun Ilbo, Hyundai plans to deploy more than 25,000 Atlas robots across multiple plants owned by Hyundai and Kia, starting with the U.S. plants in 2028; the timelines for other regions have not been announced.

More importantly, Hyundai is preparing to buy all of Atlas’s manufacturer, Boston Dynamics, from SoftBank, so it becomes a wholly owned subsidiary under Hyundai. Reuters reported that the transaction was finalized on July 16. Simply put, Hyundai won’t just be a customer of the robots—it will also be the robot manufacturer in the future. With bargaining power and production pacing in its own hands, this is exactly the same logic as in the auto industry in the past: building its own battery plants and even its own chip production lines—bringing the most critical components supply chain in-house instead of depending on how external suppliers feel.

In a Bloomberg interview, Samsung Securities analyst Esther Yim estimated that each Atlas costs about $130,000 and can break even after around two years of operation. Macquarie Securities analyst James Hong further calculated that once the cost drops to $100,000, the robot’s actual operating cost may be lower than the U.S. federal minimum hourly wage of $7.25—far below the actual pay level of typical auto workers.

This is the real reason the union is truly anxious: robots are redefining the bottom line of what counts as “reasonable wages.”

The union doesn’t want a ban

It is worth noting that the Hyundai Motor union, representing 39,000 South Korean workers, is not calling for shutting down robots. The union’s demands are: change the line workers’ hourly pay to a fixed wage, to prevent income losses caused by reduced working hours from automation; at the same time, postpone the retirement age from 60 to 65, and push for higher bonuses.

In simple terms, it is replacing the hourly logic of “earn according to how many hours you work” with a protection model of “no matter how many work hours the robots take away, your pay won’t be reduced.”

This standoff is not a challenge unique to Hyundai Motor. Tesla’s Optimus, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Toyota, and BYD—nearly all major automakers are throwing serious money behind humanoid robots and AI automation. This arms race over humanoid robots is turning “robots are cheaper than people” from a slogan into real procurement plans being added to corporate schedules. To some extent, the strike at the Ulsan plant is only bringing to the surface—early—the contradictions that the entire industry has been incubating.