Labor Minister Yim Tae-hee |
By Oh Young-jin
Staff Reporter
Labor Minister Yim Tae-hee, Tuesday, said that Korea was ``the least developed'' country globally in terms of labor union culture and that without drastic changes no further development at the national level was possible.
``Our backward labor culture is the biggest barrier to foreign investors,'' the minister told a group of city editors during a news briefing.
``This time, there is no retreat,'' he said, referring to two thorny issues separating the government and management on one side, and the unions on the other. The two are the abolition of wage payments by employers to full-time union workers and the introduction of more than one union at one worksite.
The two revisions to the pertinent laws on trade unions and arbitration, ironed out in 1997 at the onset of the Asian financial crisis, were twice postponed in implementation, with the latest delay coming in 2003. An agreement could result in the unions, government and employers fully embracing them next year.
``There can be no compromise in the content and timing of the two policies,'' said Yim, a former economic bureaucrat and incumbent lawmaker of the ruling Grand National Party (GNP). He worked as a chief of staff for President Lee Myung-bak when Lee was selected as the GNP standard bearer and during his days as president-elect.
Yim's recent appointment as the labor minister is widely seen as an expression of the strong determination by Lee, a former CEO of Hyundai Construction and Engineering, who is a strong supporter of business-first policies.
However, Yim's strong stance is garnering stiff opposition from the unions.
In a rare show of solidarity, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), the umbrella group of hawkish individual unions, and the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU), the erstwhile pro-government group, vowed to go on a general strike unless the government retreats and keeps the two policies on ice.
``A new policy is bound to face early resistance for one or two years,'' Yim said. ``I take that as an inevitable period of growing pains.''
A meeting involving representatives of the government, employers and unionized workers is expected to take place this week.
The unions are dropping hints that they will not step back, since the abolition of employer-paid wages for full-time workers is a bread-and-butter issue. Although unions of big firms may still be able to pay its leaders from their membership fees, small unions _ a key component of the union movement _ will find it hard to pay for full-time union staff, weakening their negotiating power.
Yim said, however, that it was primarily the issue of those who were paid, explaining that ordinary union workers were not as engrossed in the issue.
He argued that multiple unions should be allowed to coexist at a single worksite, stressing that not only employers but also unions should face the test of competition.
``Globally, it's not the norm to allow only one union per worksite,'' he said, dismissing concerns by the unionists that this could trigger the collapse of the existing order. For instance, Hyundai Motor is known to have six to eight factions inside the union and, theoretically, the implementation could enable those factions to set up individual unions.
Yim said that Samsung Group might face prospects of having multiple unions, observing that Korea's largest conglomerate was avidly engaged in the implementation process.
``For unions, they are more ready than we think,'' he said. ``For conglomerates, they should deal with it individually.''
He said that the unions would have to compete against each other to win the hearts and minds of their members.
Yim cited three options regarding representation rights if multiple unions were allowed at a single company.
First, the union with the biggest membership is recognized as the sole negotiating partner; second, the coalition has to have a combined share that exceeds half of the total union members; and, thirdly, a board of representatives is comprised of all unions with their numbers to be allocated in proportion to their membership size.
foolsdie@koreatimes.co.kr
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