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

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).

News updates..

First, I must apologize for the lack of posts. I have been dealing with personal issues lately that kept me out of the loop for the short bit. Fortunately, there has been some notable events in the last week or so that are worth looking into:

-First the labor ministry has imposed a ban on certain ceremonies that civil servants can do during their official events. Usage of folk labor songs and chants are common at these events which apparently antagonizes the government and people.

-The Korea Railway Workers' Union has voted for a strike.

-Minu, a migrant worker activist from Nepal, has officially been deported from Korea. Minu was deported for his involvement in political activities which non-citizens are restricted from doing under Korean law (though they are fairly vague on what a political activity is). I haven't paid to much attention to migrant worker issues on this blog so far but I am going to try to keep a better eye on it from now on.

-The NHRCK is requesting an investigation on the possibility of police brutality during the Ssangyong occupation.

Now, moving away from labor related news...

-We are all aware of DPRK defectors.. but have you heard of defectors from ROK to the DPRK?

-In more positive news not only has the ROK government came out of the recession, but had the highest quarterly GDP growth since 2002.

-The ROK government will restart the sending aid to DPRK after a series of backdoor talks between President Lee and DPRK officials. Does this mean President Lee is a in-closet Communist?

-There was a few elections this week for some seats in the parliament and to the surprise of a few, the GNP did not do well.

-Probably the biggest news however is that the Constitutional Court has made a ruling on the media bill reforms. While they state that the GNP acted inappropriately and violated the voting rules, they will not overturn the passing of the bills. This ruling is fairly similar to what happened during the Roh impeachment issue where the court ruled that Roh was out of line, but did not throw him out office. As I mentioned in a previous post, this should have been expected.

Labor ministry refuses to recgonize KGEU

In an ongoing series of escalation, the Labor Ministry has announced it is refusing to acknowledge the newly formed KGEU. Furthermore, they are pushing threw a new amendment for the civil servant laws;

If the amendment is enacted, government employees and the government employee union would be prohibited from engaging in issuing public statements, endorsing petitions, participating in protests or assemblies, and advocating for the ideas of specific political parties. MOPAS explained, “Ever since government employees’ union issued public statements opposing government policy in daily newspapers and employees have been wearing vests with political slogans on them during working hours, employees have been in violation of the measure that requires the political neutrality of government employees.” MOPAS added that is adopt the new amendment in response to the union’s decision to join the umbrella of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU).

"Advocating for the ideas of specific political parties"? What the hell is wrong with the Labor Ministry? This is no longer a simple case of fighting over political neutrality, its becoming one of the most over the top legalistic attempts to crush unionization I have ever seen.

Even the relatively moderate Korea Times is stating that this is destructive so its not just the crazy left wing Hankyoreh. All I can say is... wow.

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.