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.