AtlasBX Penalized for Discriminating Subcontractor Payment Amounts

Discrimination Against Subcontractors for Non-Issuance of Written Documents Exposed
Fair Trade Commission "First Sanction for Discriminatory Practices in Subcontract Payment Decisions"

[Asia Economy Reporter Moon Chaeseok] Korea AtlasBX, which raised processing fees by nearly 30% for automotive battery supply parts companies but only by 7% for industrial battery supply parts companies, has received a corrective order from the Fair Trade Commission.

According to the Fair Trade Commission on the 12th, AtlasBX, a battery manufacturing and sales business, commissioned manufacturing to battery parts companies from November 2014 to July 2018 and changed subcontract unit prices 22 times without providing written notice.

Also, for automotive battery parts supply contractors, processing fees were raised four times over 10 years from 2008 to 2018 by 29.4%, but for industrial battery parts supply contractors, the fee was only raised for the first time by 6.7% in March 2018.

They raised processing fees citing increases in minimum wage and electricity costs, but without justifiable reasons, raised fees for automotive battery businesses while freezing those for industrial ones.

Accordingly, the Fair Trade Commission imposed a corrective order (recurrence prevention order) on AtlasBX.

Shim Joo-eun, head of the Manufacturing Subcontracting Division at the Fair Trade Commission, explained, "This action affects all supply contractors and is significant as it is the first case to sanction discriminatory treatment of specific supply contractors without justifiable reasons while changing unit prices."

Shim added, "Going forward, the Fair Trade Commission plans to continuously strive to ensure that supply contractors do not suffer unfair disadvantages through strict law enforcement against unfair subcontracting transactions."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.