By Kim Tong-hyung
Korea’s banking industry may be facing its largest wave of labor militancy in years as management and unions continue to fight amid the heightened political intensity of an election year.
First it was unionized workers at the Korea Exchange Bank (KEB) threatening the possibility of an all-out strike as they engaged in difficult talks with management over job security and wages ahead of the bank’s absorption into domestic rival Hana Financial.
Now, management at KB Financial, which competes closely with state-owned Woori Financial for the title of the country’s largest banking group, is struggling to defend itself against claims of suppressing its unionists.
KB’s labor union filed a lawsuit Thursday against 57 company executives for allegedly disrupting its efforts to exercise its shareholders’ rights and recommend an outside director. It also filed a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission over the issue.
Through voting rights owned by stock-holding employees, KB’s union has been attempting to recommend Kim Jin, a lawyer from Lawyers for a Democratic Society (Minbyun), a progressive group of legal experts, as a candidate for one of the company’s outside director positions at its shareholders’ meeting in March. KB will have to replace five of its eight outside directors after their terms end next month.
KB’s employees stock ownership association owns 0.91 percent of KB, making it the group’s fourth-largest shareholder behind the National Pension Fund, Franklin Templeton Investments and ING.
To recommend an outside director, the union will need support from at least 0.25 percent of the company’s voting shareholders. To meet this requirement, the union has been persuading stock-owning unionists to sign a power of attorney that will allow it to present Kim as a candidate during the shareholders’ meeting.
No bank has ever allowed its unionists to recommend an outside director and KB seemingly has no intention to be the first. Its union claims that the lender’s executives have been bullying stock-owning employees to prevent them from signing the power of attorney, threatening unfavorable personnel decisions.
``Should the labor union be allowed to do what they are attempting, the risk related to KB Financial’s reputation will increase and lead to a drop in share prices. It’s urgent that those who signed to power of attorney should withdraw their decision immediately,’’ read an email sent to stock-owning employees that was under the names of the company’s vice presidents.
``The support from our stock-owning unionists has been good, as more than 13,000 of them attended a recent meeting to discuss the plans to recommend an outside director candidate. This has really rattled the management, which is pressuring the stock-owning employees through personal meetings, phone calls, Internet instant messages and Kakao Talk,’’ said an official from KB’s labor union.
``The email sent to the stock-owning employees was signed by executives at vice president and division head levels. So instead of picking one or two, we decided to target all of them in the lawsuit.’’
The union has been in a difficult relationship with the management since KB Chairman Euh Yoon-dae took the management helm in 2010 and pushed forward aggressive cost-cutting drives.