Taxpayers Are Biggest Losers of Long, Consumptive Conflict

The government has illegalized the nation's biggest civil servants' union and sharply curtailed the radius of allowable activities for others. These moves, apparently aimed to take an upper hand before the public workers' unions are unified into one giant group in December, portend another turbulent spell of government-labor conflict, this time against its own employees.

Would what the unionists call the government's ``preemptive strike'' be of much help for attaining its purpose, then? Hardly likely, and it will only make the already bad relationship worse.

The Labor Ministry may as well take issue with the dismissed civil servants working as full-time unionists at the Korean Government Employees' Union, a practice that is illegal. But that reason seems to fall short of justifying it to turn KGEU into an illegitimate entity. Moreover, most unionists think these workers were fired unfairly, largely related to their union activities. Most of all, KGEU will disband itself in less than two months to be integrated into a larger union.

Equally hard to understand is the government's move to revise laws to completely ban political activities by its employees. The existing clause calling for government employees to keep political neutrality was originally intended to prevent election malpractices, such as rigging votes, by government officials before the nation was democratized, rather than to ban the expression of their political views, which belong to the Constitutional rights of all Koreans no matter what their professions are.

Korea is one of the few OECD members that deny the right to strike for its employees. In some ``advanced'' countries President Lee Myung-bak so frequently mentions, even police officers ― who most Koreans regard only as people who crack down on strikers ― are allowed to walk out. If the government keeps their employees from even making their political views public, their unions will remain little more than some fraternity groups.

Aggravating the government's fear is of course the enlarged union's joining in the more militant of the nation's two umbrella labor organizations, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, which may not be totally groundless given the KCTU's anti-government track records.

But that should be the reason for more scrupulous and elaborate defining of activities for what the unions can and cannot do, not for fundamentally blocking most of their activities, turning the unionists even more militant, especially because the recession seems to be the worst time for another round of protracted and consumptive labor strife.

The entire administration, from President Lee on down, needs to renew its perception not only of the government employees' union but unionism itself.

Problematic in this regard are some conservative media outlets that say the government employees are giving taxpayers' precious money as fees to the anti-government umbrella union. This is little different from saying the unionists are receiving salaries while doing nothing at all; the civil servants are justly paid for their labor and it is only natural unionists pay fees to the unions. One right-wing paper even called the KGEU a ``a monster'' from which the government should rescue its people.

The first step toward industrial peace is to recognize and respect each other, and only on such a basis can they start genuine and productive dialogue. The administration should realize it is hiring employees only on behalf of the people and set an example of what a good employer should be.