Hooray for legalist assaults on workers!!

After taking a break a couple weeks ago, the Korean government has decided to reopen its attack on workers and unions in Korea. The current target seems to be the civil servant unions. Monday Ministry of Public Administration and Security announced that they will fire atleast 14 workers and send another 105 to disciplinary committee for their actions in July. I think its not a stretch to say that this action was in pure retaliation for the unions decision to join the KCTU.

In further news, several administrators have announced they plan to toughen restrictions on civil servants ability to challenge government policies.

The ministries agreed to make a list of political activities considered anathema for civil servants. The current law says, “Public servants are banned from forming or becoming members of a specific political party, and from advocating or opposing a specific political party or political candidate.” Violators are subject to a one-year prison term or a fine of up to 3 million won ($2,577).

But the ministries want to add the following phrase: “Civil servants are prohibited from forming groups and planning, leading and hosting events that oppose or interrupt government policies.”

I can understand the need for preventing civil servants to be involved in party politics or endorsing candidates, but is this really necessary? If civil servants believe strongly that a government policy is wrong shouldn't they have the right to oppose it publicly? I can understand that some groups of civil servants (such as those in diplomacy) need to be in unison with government policies due to the nature of their job, do just random bureaucrats in non-security areas need to be that strict? Furthermore, this just damages the bureaucracy even more if many employees are not happy with what is going on and just quit. The US has suffered badly because many of its Middle East experts quit in protest of the Iraq war.

The government said it will then try to ban civil servants’ labor unions from joining either of the nation’s two umbrella unions - the aforementioned KCTU or the Federation of Korean Trade Unions.

So not only are they being authoritarian douchebags, they are being stupid as well. Apparently they haven't learned from Park Chung-hee who never went this far with their labor policies. Wanna know why? Because its much easier to just co-opt major union federations and make them part of the government. This is how the FKTU formed.

Oh, and an organizer for the Ssangyong occupation will face a jailterm for causing a violent strike. Not really shocking news there.