ed ’Bus of hope’

Time to tackle layoff issue with calm reason

Exactly 200 days have passed since Kim Jin-sook staged a sit-in on a 35-meter vessel crane in protest against mass layoffs of shipyard workers at Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction.

The six-month strike ended a month ago, as the union agreed on management’s offer for better benefits for workers accepting layoffs. Most of the fired workers do not accept the agreement, and Kim is fighting for them. The struggle has become a national issue now, and an international topic thanks to the power of social networking services (SNS), with thousands of people aboard ``buses of hope” joining the sympathy rally.

We think the matter didn’t need to become complicated like now, provided the Hanjin Heavy and the government had taken more responsible actions.

First of all, Hanjin Heavy’s management is obliged to prove the layoff of more than 400 workers was inevitable, even justifiable, for financial reasons. The report that the company has held a ``dividend party” by shelling out 17.4 billion won on major shareholders and raised executives’ pay by 100 million won sharply weakens the company’s rationale.

Chairman Cho Nam-ho must end his prolonged overseas stay for dubious reasons and present himself at the National Assembly to dissolve suspicions of making powerless workers scapegoats for cost cuts and a plant relocation to the Philippines to seek workers with lower wages.

The government and police are planning to crack down on the third arrival of thousands of sympathetic protesters, including big-name opposition politicians, civic activists and ordinary citizens, scheduled for Saturday, dubbing them ``third party interventionists.”

By the logic of the nation’s labor laws leaning heavily toward employers as well as law enforcement officials of this ``business-friendly” administration, the visitors may be cumbersome meddlers in a labor-management issue of a private company.

As most of the participants feel, however, it is a matter of the basic right to live in a society with extremely loose social safety nets where dismissal from workplaces is often synonymous to economic murder.

Still, as the residents in Yeongdo, Busan, where the crane is located, complain, periodic mass demonstrations can disrupt other workers’ businesses and lives.

So, all parties involved should go back to where they belong and perform their role. The Hanjin management should conduct collective bargaining anew, the labor ministry ought to work out arbitration, and lawmakers, especially those of governing Grand National Party, must open a hearing on Hanjin’s top manager.

It would be all the better if legislators make bipartisan efforts to improve labor laws in ways to make layoffs more difficult and to provide far higher jobless allowances and better job-training programs.