By Kim Rahn
President Moon Jae-in urged unions to join the government’s labor reform drives aimed at creating jobs, reducing irregular positions and boosting job quality.
Moon had a meeting with representatives of civil servants’ unions and state organizations at Cheong Wa Dae, Thursday, to express his gratitude for their donation of financial incentives to improve the working conditions of irregular workers.
“The government firmly believes the labor sector is a partner in state management,” Moon said. “And one of its goals is to realize a society where labor is respected. But it cannot be achieved only through government efforts; if the labor sector joins us, we can achieve a lot more.”
Toward that goal, the President said management also needs to join, and all related parties ― the government, labor and management ― need to compromise by making concessions and sharing burdens. “Without compromise among the three parties, sustainable development is impossible.”
He said the government would play a responsible role in invigorating talks among the three. “We’ll try to resume the halted tripartite talks system. I don’t mind the form of the talks as long as all related parties can communicate and build solidarity,” Moon said.
His remarks were virtually targeting the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU), the nation’s two umbrella unions. The two had refused to participate in talks at the tripartite Economic and Social Development Commission, to protest the government’s labor policies.
In October, the FKTU expressed its intention to return to the commission talks, but the KCTU is still refusing to do so.
“Both labor and management, please trust the government and support it. If you do so for one year, the government will prove its economic and labor policies will benefit both sides,” Moon said.
The President also said the government will be an “exemplary employer” in the public sector, saying more and more state- and local government-run agencies are upgrading workers’ status from irregular to regular.
In the meeting, Moon praised the joint move by civil servants’ union and state organizations to create “funds for co-existence and solidarity,” which were raised from incentives workers received last year.
In January last year, the Park Geun-hye administration presented a plan to adopt a performance-based incentive system for civil servants, saying they did not have competitiveness with the previous pay system, in which their wages rose automatically annually.
Civil servants protested, saying it was difficult to evaluate their performance in contrast with other occupations. But the administration pushed ahead with the plan, and 120 ministries and state-run organizations introduced the incentive system in June last year, with a combined 160 billion won being provided in incentives at the end of the year.
But the succeeding Moon government scrapped the performance-based system in June this year. And the civil servants’ unions decided to donate the money to improve the working conditions of irregular workers in the public sector.
“The donation was the best example of talks and compromise,” Moon said. “The labor sector proposed the idea first. Management, civic groups and academia discussed how to realize it. And finally a foundation to manage the funds was established through the participation of the government, management, labor, civic groups and academia.”