Nam Hyun-woo has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2013, mostly covering business and politics. He currently belongs to the Business Desk where he covers topics such as emerging tech, AI, ICT and Korea's chaebol community. Prior to joining the team, he was the paper's correspondent for the presidential office of Korea during the Yoon Suk Yeol and Moon Jae-in administrations.
Nepotism by labor unions at top of reform agenda
President Yoon Suk Yeol speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the presidential office in Yongsan District, Seoul, Tuesday. Joint Press Corps
By Nam Hyun-woo
President dusts off playbook of bashing unionists to raise approval rating
By Nam Hyun-woo
President Yoon Suk Yeol is recalibrating his focus on reforming South Korea's labor union culture, an agenda that salvaged his dismal job approval ratings months ago, in an apparent effort to work his way out of a string of diplomatic controversies weakening his grip on state affairs.
During a Cabinet meeting, Tuesday, Yoon slammed some companies' hiring practice of giving favors to employees' children, saying such preferential employment policy is “very wrong.”
“Some domestic companies' collective bargaining agreements maintain clauses forcing the businesses to prioritize hiring employees' children,” Yoon said. “This is a very wrong practice.”
According to data released by the Ministry of Employment and Labor in August last year, 58 out of 1,057 domestic companies employing more than 100 workers had collective bargaining agreements containing clauses that favor the hiring of employees' children or family members.
Of them, carmaker Kia is known for having a collective bargaining agreement that forces the company to hire one immediate family member of a union member who died from illness while employed, children of retired employees or those who worked for more than 25 straight years.
“The practice of hereditary employment goes against our Constitutional spirit and is an unfair succession of privileges, which deprives our future generation of opportunities,” Yoon said.
“I have always stressed that the first step toward labor reform is consolidating the rules and laws in labor-management relations,” the president said, asking Cabinet members to make efforts to root out those practices.
Yoon's comments are interpreted as an effort to return to his playbook of criticizing South Korea's labor unions and labor market structure to boost public support for his administration.
Last summer, Yoon's approval rating hovered between 25 and 35 percent, but rose to almost 40 percent in the winter after the president took a hardline stance against illegal strikes by unionized truckers and initiated labor reforms by demanding large labor unions to boost financial transparency.
However, the momentum came to a halt following public backlash for the president's handling of South Korea's historical issues with Japan while attempting to improve Seoul's relations with Tokyo, and his office's response to leaked Pentagon documents that purportedly showed the U.S. spied on Yoon's secretaries.
The labor reform drive is also suffering setbacks due to controversy in recent months fueled by the government's hasty efforts to overhaul the country's statutory workweek system. Following the controversy, the government paused its overhaul effort and is now listening to public opinions.
“Regarding the plan to add more flexibility to the country's workweek system, the government is currently gathering extensive public opinions through one-on-one surveys and sample surveys,” Yoon said.
“Both the results and contents of such surveys should be disclosed, as well as the process. In particular, the survey's sample setting system should be scientifically and objectively representative and properly disclosed.”
Members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions hold up signs during a rally against the government's labor policy near the National Assembly in Seoul, Dec. 3, 2022. AP-Yonhap
During the meeting, Yoon also called for improvements to the country's fiscal prudence and criticized the previous Moon Jae-in government for causing the national debt to snowball.
“The national debt has surpassed the 1,000 trillion won ($758 billion) mark for the first time in our nation's history,” Yoon said. “About 600 trillion won of debt was accumulated for the first 70 years after the government was founded, but 400 trillion won was added during the previous administration alone.”
The president noted that “passing on the burden caused by wanton expenditures is nothing more than an exploitation of the future generation,” and urged the National Assembly to engage in discussions to pass a bill containing codes for fiscal stability.
A North Korean fisherman, who was captured near the eastern inter-Korean maritime boundary, is handed over to North Korean authorities in the border truce village of Panmunjom on Nov. 7, 2019. Yonhap
Screening NK defectors
During the Cabinet meeting, members approved a revision to the North Korean Defectors Protection and Settlement Support Act. The revision is aimed at setting up procedures confirming North Korean defectors' intentions to be protected by South Korea and enable South Korean authorities to investigate or “take other necessary measures” if the defector is considered a criminal.
This is a follow-up measure to a 2019 case in which South Korea deported two North Korean fishermen who were captured in the East Sea. The previous Moon administration said it repatriated the fishermen because they had admitted to killing 16 fellow crew members and their intentions to defect to the South were deemed insincere.
This resulted in then-Director of National Security Chung Eui-yong and then-Presidential Chief of Staff Noh Young-min being indicted by prosecutors.