Bankers stage strike against merit pay system
Tens of thousands of South Korea's bank workers gathered in Seoul on Friday for a walkout against the planned expansion of a performance-based pay system in the nation's financial industry.
The Korean Financial Industry Union (KFIU), an umbrella union of roughly 100,000 members working at 15 commercial banks nationwide, plans to go on a general strike at 10:30 a.m. at the Sangam World Cup Stadium in western Seoul.
The move is expected to affect the operation of as many as 10,000 bank branches during the day.
The Bank of Korea has put an emergency response team in operation in a bid to minimize the impact to the financial system.
The central bank is not a member of the union, but it shares computer and some other financial transaction networks with the commercial banks.
The KFIU claims it has no other choice to protest the scheme for a full-scale performance-linked salary mechanism, saying it will be used to allow banks to fire more employees and eventually lower the competitiveness of the banking sector.
"We can't accept the dismissal salary system forced by the administration even with a knife under our necks," said Kim Moon-ho, head of the union. "It will seriously harm the stability of the financial industry and bring irreversible damage to the people."
The union will consider additional collective actions after the one-day general strike, the first in two years, he added.
Government officials have stressed that merit-based pay is a must to help ride out a crisis facing the financial sector, mainly caused by prolonged low economic growth and interest rates.
The government is open to talks with bank workers on detailed ways of implementing it, they added. (Yonhap)