By Lee Tae-hoon
Staff Reporter

The National Assembly Environment and Labor Committee endorsed a bill Wednesday that would permit multiple unions at a single workplace from July 1, 2011 and ban wage payments to full-time union leaders by companies.

Under the new regulations, leaders that actually work as well as engage in union activities would only be paid for absences when these are related to union activities related to the improvement of labor-management relations.

Of the 15 committee members, eight lawmakers of the governing Grand National Party (GNP) voted for the bill in the presence of Rep. Choo Mi-ae, chairwoman of the panel.

Earlier in the day, Chairwoman Choo tabled a total of five trade-union related bills, including a compromise bill that she had proposed ― this was the one that was finally approved.

Though Choo called on lawmakers to engage in open discussions throughout the day before the bill was put to a vote, the chairwoman, without prior notification, railroaded her own proposal upon the resumption of the session at around 2:10 p.m.

Opposition lawmakers, who had not received or reviewed the compromise bill, were blocked from entering the conference room by security guards when voting began after Choo exercised her power to maintain order.

Opposition parties criticized the compromise bill struck between Choo and the GNP, arguing that umbrella unions should not be excluded from labor-management negotiations.

With the passage of Choo's bill, the four other bills were automatically scrapped.

However, Assembly endorsement of the approved bill remains uncertain since it must pass the Legislation and Judiciary Committee before it is put to a floor vote in a plenary session Friday.

In 1997, the Assembly endorsed a bill that would introduce the multiple union system and drop full-time union workers from payrolls from 2002.

However, it postponed the implementation of the law to Jan. 1, 2010 by revising the legislation twice in 2001 and 2006.

Talks on a new labor union bill had been deadlocked at the legislature as lawmakers had reached a consensus on the need for multiple unions, but differed over how to establish negotiating channels.

leeth@koreatimes.co.kr