Police to End E-land Strike
By Park Chung-a
Staff Reporter
Labor-management negotiations at the nation's major retailer E-land Group ended in failure, Thursday, while the government said it may use police to end the sit-in strike of unionized workers at the company's two major outlets in Sangam-dong and Kangnam.
Despite overnight negotiations, the union and management failed to narrow their differences over the scope of employment security, salary, changing the status of non-regular workers into regular ones and management's compensation lawsuit against the union.
Labor Minister Lee Sang-soo warned, Wednesday, that the government would use the police in the case of a prolonged protest.
Unionized workers at the E-land Group continued their sit-in protest Thursday _ for the 20th day in the Homever outlet in Sangam-dong and the 13th day in the New Core outlet in Gangnam _ against the massive dismissal of non-regular workers.
Meanwhile, 36,756 unionized metal workers from 44 work places continued their partial strike for the second consecutive day, demanding they be given the right for collective bargaining.
After carrying out two to six-hour long work stoppages until Friday, union members may launch a full-scale walkout from Monday, said the Korean Metal Workers' Union (KMWU), to which the nation's major automobile and metal unions belong.
Unionized workers at GM Daewoo Auto & Technology Co., the nation's third-largest automaker held a partial strike over a pay raise for a third straight day. The union held the four-hour strike from 10:00 a.m. according to decision to continue the partial strike from Thursday after talks on a pay hike collapsed.
Workers also decided to reject overtime this weekend and meet again with management later in the day to iron out their differences over the pay dispute.
The union, which has a membership of 9,500, is demanding an 8.8 percent increase in base salary and a 400 percent bonus increase.
Unionized workers and management of Yonsei Severance Hospital, also on Thursday, agreed to mediation by the National Labor Relations Commission as they failed to reach an agreement over workers' status and salaries despite continued negotiations.