Multi-union law delayed, alliance over..

Last Friday, a last minute deal between the FKTU and Labor Ministry was reached that delayed implementation of the new labor laws until 2010. You can read about the deal here. Very few people are happy with what happened, from both business side and the KCTU. The KCTU has announced it will hold demonstrations against the new tripartite agreement. The Hankyoreh has a short interview with the KCTU chairman right here. Korea Times also has a decent article citing the breakup here. The KCTU was not aware of any negotiations and seems received the news the same way I did on Friday, by hearing it from the news.

Overall, this is a disaster and the worst realistic scenario imaginable. Not only is the labor movement completely blocked, it looks like this is going to be one of those issues that will tie up the movement for a while. This issue will be going on for around 15 years when this labor revision takes affect (assuming it passes the National Assembly). Out of all the issues within the Korean labor movement, this is not something we need to be spending 15 years on, especially when the government is still refusing to do its job on the irregular worker issue or when numerous major strikes are failing due to lack of support and state violence.

In other news, Korail is going to take major action against union members during the weeklong strike that took place about two weeks ago. The Labor Ministry also continued its war against public employee unions by refusing the application of the new integrated civil servant union, demanding more information on membership rules, how elections are run and demanded the chairman to send in a stool sample to show that his digestive system is not red. Some scotch sounds good right now

General strike looks inevitable...

Hope all my American readers had a nice holiday, meanwhile a couple major newsworthy events happened over the last few days. The biggest being collapse of last minute talks between the two major labor umbrella unions and the labor ministry.

However, Labor Minister Yim Tae-hee walked out of the conference room in Yeouido, Wednesday, saying, “There will be no more talks.” Lim is the point man for President Lee in labor affairs, vowing in public that Korea’s militant union movement is the most backward among advanced nations and poses a major threat to continued economic growth.

The KCTU said Thursday that they were not ready to back down.

“The government and businessmen give nothing but pain and toil to people. It’s time to hear the music,” it said in a press release. KCTU leader Lim Sung-kyu said that the organization was ready to go on strike.

The FKTU has already begin throwing its weigh around by occupying the GNP's headquarters Friday during a sit-in. To add more fuel to the fire, the Korean Railway Workers’ Union strike has also started bringing freight shipping in Korea to a stop. Expect more news after the weekend.

TUAC comments on the current situation...

As things begin heating up over in Korea, with news about the Union for the environment ministry succeeding from the KCTU and the FKTU beginning to vote on a general strike. Too add further fire, the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD adopted a resolution that condemns the Korean government for their recent actions. Along with NPR's article covering the recent rallies (with beautiful photos too), the conflict has slowly quickly becoming an international event.

More on this tomorrow (currently out of town for a conference).

Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike!

As many people probably know by now Unions in Korea are not very happy about the Labor Ministry's plans to force through the new labor laws involving paid union members and multiple unions in one shop. What has been surprising though is that the biggest bullhorn in recent days has been from the FKTU, a more conservative pro-government federation, and not the KCTU. It looks like now that the dog poop has hit the fan, and the FKTU is now threatening a general strike.

"We regard the issue of multiple unions and salary ban as a matter of life and death for 16 million workers and will devote all our energy to fighting against it (revisions)," the FKTU said in a statement issued in the name of 652 representatives.

The FKTU agrees to having more than one union at a single work place but opposes government demands that only one of them be recognized as the negotiating partner with the management. It also argues that the government's "no work, no pay" principle undermines the union's important role as the mediator between workers and the management.

The labor association, which claims over 700,000 members nationwide, said they were abandoning a tripartite panel's agreement reached in February on "sharing the burden" to help overcome the global economic crisis. The KFTU had pledged at the time to refrain from strikes and to freeze or cut back wages.

According to the JoongAng Daily, the FKTU is planning to team up with the KCTU to coordinate a general strike.

“If our demands regarding multiple unions in a single workplace and pay for full-time unionists are not fully satisfied, we have no option but to start a general strike,” Jang Seok-chun, head of the FKTU, told reporters in a press conference held at the Korea Electric Power Corporation in Samseong-dong, southern Seoul. “If we team up with the KCTU, we will stage a joint strike .?.?. Executive members of two labor unions will meet to discuss forming an alliance on Oct. 21.”

...

Lee Su-bong, KCTU spokesman, said there’s no major obstacle to forming an alliance and staging a strike with the FKTU because the “two sides share the same views on the disputed matters.”

Has President Lee's labor policies finally pushed the unions over the edge? Has the FKTU turned over a new leaf? Will this actually be a real strike and not just a weak 3 day event like the KCTU's last general strike? Will I ever get my workers visa allowing me to watch these events and take pretty photos for you all?

My answers: Yes. No. Possibly. And hopefully.

The labor ministry begins fight with... the FKTU!?

With much labor news being dominated by the KCTU and affiliated groups, one might be shocked that the conservative FKTU is butting heads with the government in recent days. The issue is over a fairly old bill that I covered a few posts ago.

While the FKTU wants all multiple unions to have negotiation power, the government has said only a single representative body should be in charge of negotiations. The FKTU also wants the wages of full-time union officials to be decided independently between a labor union and a company, while the government said a labor union must be responsible for the wages of its own officials.

If the government and the labor community fail to compromise, the current laws governing the two issues will automatically take effect. In that case, all labor unions will have negotiation power, while companies will be banned from paying union officials.

Jang made clear that he will pull out all FKTU officials from the Economic and Social Development Commission, formerly known as the Korea Tripartite Commission.

This is not the first time the FKTU has pulled out of government committees; they did it in 2005 in opposition to President Roh's neoliberal policies. So far, the conservative opinion writers have been silent on this issue. I'll post more if I see anything else come up.

Woori Bank cuts wages..

With government pressure mounting, the Woori Bank has announced it will cut wages for its workers by 5% and new workers by 20%. The Korea Financial Industry Union (KFIU), which is based on the craft union model affiliated with the FKTU, apparently is one of the more "flexible" unions according to this article;

The Korea Federation of Banks, part of the industry-wide negotiations in the financial sector, unilaterally terminated talks with the KFIU on Aug 20 and gave its member banks authority to negotiate. Since its founding in 2000, the KFIU has been praised as the model of flexible Korean-style industry-wide negotiations, and had secured a 40-hour work week. This is the first year KFIU has been unsuccessful in negotiating an industry-wide wage deal.

Now why are labor-management cooperation models the best models for unions to work around again? The KFIU is a bit more willing to strike than most its fellow craft unions but its clear that the current situation in the ROK is not an attack on "violent labor" but all forms of labor organizing. And the KFIU is not the only union in the public sector under attack.

A labor expert says the industry-wide negotiating system has been completely shaken by the Management Association of the Health Industry which had broken off from their position as negotiating partner with Korea Health and Medical Workers’ Union. He is concerned that considerable tensions will be appearing in labor-management relations in response to continuous attempts to weaken the industry-wide negotiating system.

Independent unions recieve higher wages then others...

According to a study by the JoongAng Daily and Labor Ministry.

The wage growth rate in workplaces with independent laborers was between 5.2 and 6.8 percent during a three-year period. Unionized workers under the Federation of Korean Trade Unions saw the rate of growth decrease from 4.5 to 3.9 percent while unionists affiliated to the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions saw a rate growth of 4.5 to 4.7 percent. In the first half of this year, wage growth in workplaces with no unionized laborers was 2 percent. Wage growth for unionists under the FKTU, independent workers and members under KCTU were 0.9, 0.8 and 0.5 percent, respectively.

I should say I am not really shocked; from most of the talk I have heard from these independent unions have been mostly focused on increasing their economic standing. Of course such narrow focus creates a giant misconception on the purpose of unions. Korean workers do not just fight for high wages (though that is a common demand). Many disputes have came over the issue of layoffs, fringe benefits, seniority vs performance wages, working conditions, temporary/irregular workers and control of their workplace.

However, each Simpac worker received incentives worth 10 million won ($8,090) and company shares at the end of last year due to increased profits since unionists withdrew from the KCTU in January of last year. It was the first incentive in 10 years. Nam Ho-ki, 48, who has worked at the firm for 22 years, said workers once received nothing despite past profits. He said employees now believe there will be compensation if they work hard.

“While the company suffered from a deficit in the first half of this year due to the economic downturn, unionized workers first suggested a wage freeze,” said Choi Jin-shik, chairman of Simpac. “The firm will do its upmost to run the business successfully so that management can offer workers incentives by the end of this year.”

Some said that changing characteristics of labor-management relations in Simpac are largely influenced by its labor union’s withdrawal of membership from the KCTU. All the unionists voted in favor of the withdrawal.

It sounds like business is starting to co-opt these independent unions by giving them economic benefits in exchange for cooperation. This is what Japan has done which was a major success in derailing the once militant Japanese workforce. From a management perspective (as well as a union bureaucrat) this is a good thing. And I'm pretty sure the unionized workforce is pretty happy.

The question is this, is this good for workers overall? No. What often happens in these type of agreements is that the management will give high economic incentives to its unionized workforce that represents a small portion of their total workforce. Management then makes this up by treating its non-unionized parts like crap outsourcing much of the work overseas and begin relying on temporary/irregular workers domestically. This is what happened in Japan; you got a well off labor aristocracy (as Lenin would have put it) while most of the employees suffer. For women and minorities (who make the majority of both overseas workers and irregular workers) this is bad.