In Depth back to UNI In Depth home page 02/02/2004 UNI-APRO KOREA DESK NEWS Issue 1 January 27, 2004 1. KCTU elected Bro. Lee Soo-Ho as new President On Jan 16th, KCTU, one of the leading national centers of Korean unions held its Congress and elected a new president and general secretary. Lee Soo-Ho was elected president of KCTU defeating Yoo duck-Sang with 54.8% of the votes. Bro. Lee was from the Korean Teachers Union and a former general secretary of KCTU. Bro Lee Suk-Heng is the new general secretary, and is from metal sector. Bro Lee said “Now it is not a time for internal fighting but a time for uniting together for betterment of workers.” According to KCTU’s new rules, there is a 30% quota for women and two new women vice presidents have been elected. The KCTU election drew full attention from the government and the employers association, with speculation of which team will be better for talks. In particular, KCTU’s participation in the Tripartite Commission (headed by Mr. Kim Keum-Soo, one of the most respected union leaders in Korea since 1960s) was one of the hot debate issues in the election time. The Congress was opened to members and outsiders through real time internet services, and over 10,000 members and outsiders visited the web sites during the Congress. 2. Sister Cha Soo-Ryun released On January 16, Sister Cha Soo-Ryun, advisor of Korean Health and Medical Workers Union, was released from Seoul Execution Office after the court’s ruling that her charges should not be 1 year imprisonment, but 3 years of suspension. She was imprisoned 5 times due to violation of Authority Mediation Act, which prohibits industrial actions on essential services. She led 7 months of strike action for the Catholic Medical Center union last year, and suffered sickness, when she was escaping from the warrant of arrest for some months before imprisonment. She spoke to welcomers at her release, saying that our struggle against the current Authority Mediation Act brought into place a new phase for change. She would continue to fight for strengthening public values of medical services and medical reforms. 3. Employee Stock Ownership Plan challenged by unions Korea Telecom trade union is expected to enter a new phase of industrial relations after Mr. Lee Yong-Kyung, CEO of Korea Telecom, declared that there will be no further staff cuts during his term in his New Year message. But the company played a game over the union by circulating a petition for signatures for delegation of employees’ shares rights to Mr. Nah Pan-Joo. He is from the management and head of the welfare department, and current chief of ESOP. In fact the union is driving a signature campaign for delegation of shares rights from employees to represent minority shareholders at the general meeting. Currently employees hold 6% of the total company shares. This action is to get enough union power to nominate one of three outside directors to the board at the general meeting. KT union decided to be actively involved in delivering employees voices and ideas to the management through restructure of ESOP and nomination of an outside director of the board. Transparency in management and participation of employees in the management will create a quality-driven work environment and turn the long time existing confrontational industrial relations into cooperative and partnership relations, according to the union. Since 1996 the company promised employment security 11 times, but the number of employees reduced from the peak of 60,000 in 1996 to 38,000 in 2003. At this edge of the battle for empowerment of employees through minority shareholders protection action, KT union wants to draw a new map of the trade union movement, particularly with long term job security and partnership relations. 4. Carrefour Korea union, wishes to become an early bird for collective bargaining. Carrefour Korea union started its first round of negotiation with management. Mr. Hwangbo, HR director, shouted to the union saying that the company proposal has been already set up. “If the union opposes the company offer, we need to take an ultimate decision.” He then left.. Union negotiators were embarrassed at his remarks and attitude and sent an official letter requesting Mr. Hwangbo to be left out of the negotiation team. The union said that this impolite attitude will uproar the anger from union members and he is not acceptable to the union at all. He was replaced by Mr. Lee Bong-Jin. The most immediate agenda for both sides was to implement a 5-day work system. The new Korean law requires all companies with more than 1,000 employees to introduce this from July this year. Overall specific regulations are supposed to be discussed at the company level through negotiation with the union. According to the company plan, revealed by HR department, the company will hold a briefing session for employees at Ilsan branch as a pilot branch. And then it will be extended the pilot to other branches. However, management planned to try to get consent from employees, but will not submit the plan to the Ministry of Labor. This is a violation of the law, as the company should submit the new company regulation 15 days before implementation, in spite of obtaining consent from employees. The Union is very much disappointed by this plan. It is totally opposite from Mr. Philip Brollanigo’s remarks in May last year. In his inaugural speech, he said that the company will improve human resources management and welfare system. He wanted to have all Carrefour employees with strong pride as Carrefour family. Carrefour is estimated to have over 10,000 staff in Korea, while the union has so far recruited over 100 members. 5. Korean unions vow to never miss a political fight at the general election Korean unions are outreaching to launch an extensive election campaign under the umbrella of Korean Democratic Labor Party (KDLP) and Korean Social Democratic Party (KSDP). KDLP revealed an ambitious plan to get 15 seats at the National Assembly from constituency and party representational seats in the election on 15 April. Mr. Kwon Yong-Kil, representative of KDLP who ran for the presidential election in 2002, will challenge the seat for his hometown constituency. Korean Federation of Transportation & Public Services Workers Union is leading the union’s political involvement and plans to nominate over 15 candidates for the election. The selection review for candidates will be held on January 28th by candidates campaign speeches and debates from the floors. KDLP held a press conference and offered to have TV debates with all parties, to debate if we really want to have clean-election with less than W100 million (US$85.000) election expense. He also called for a reduction by the amount of illegal political funds in the last presidential election, from the government subsidy for the general election. The illegal political fund reached over several billion Won. This was showered with harsh criticism from the people, and demands for a full investigation targeted at lawmakers and conglomerates. Everyday one or two lawmakers are accused of illegal political fund. FKTU established KSDP last year and invited Mr. Jang Ki-Pyo, as a representative of KSDP. FKTU is also preparing for the election and held a temporary congress on 15th of January. The Congress endorsed a motion to raise political funds and to endorse the unions’ active participation in the election campaign, including the nomination of candidates for 10 seats. KSDP recently launched a one million signature campaign for a policy questionnaire. Mr. Jang Ki-Pyo emphasized that the social security system is the right answer to the current problems of society divided into the rich and the poor and the current conflicts between the management and the unions over the employment and wages. 6. UNI KLC Swedish Social Welfare Study Tour returned with new hope. 11 members of UNI KLC returned from a one week Swedish welfare study tour. It was implemented under the tri-angle cooperation by the Olof Palme International Center, SEKO and ABF of Sweden. Members were provided with pre-study information for Swedish trade union movement and Swedish social welfare system before departure. However they found lots of differences of their understandings and prejudices based on actual aspects of Sweden. When the group met young MP Mikael Damberg, from the Social Democratic Party, he was questioned over what does the Swedish model stand for, after the bitter experiences of third way in the 1980s. He answered that Swedish third way was different from so-called Anthony Giddens’ third way. Sweden chose in-between Thatcherism/Reagonism and Communism. However the cold war is over, there is no point to be in-between. It means that Sweden will go for the Nordic Countries-Swedish model which is designed to allow free market economy for growth but regulated market for social security of health care and education etc. The Swedish housing policy, renowned for the One-Million program since the 1960s, operates with the principle of housing for public good, not for profit. But the major cities of Stockholm, Goethenburg and Malmo, with increasing population, showed critical problems with lack of housing and increasing prices. Sweden has a balanced structure of owning and renting houses, but the housing supply in the recent decades decreased, with the high land prices and short term profits. This study tour group will present reports to a training courses in March and bring lively debate over the Swedish model of solidaristic wage policy, central negotiation and impacts of globalization and privatization. 7. Media workers union call for Minister of Information and Communication to step down National Union of Media Workers has challenged the government’s digitalization plan which was supposed to introduce not the European system but the American system. Two years ago the unions expressed serious concerns over the faults of the American system in terms of technical problems and the double cost of new TV sets. It will place a burden on shoulders of taxpayers and consumers. A year long battle over the plan was made to call for a system test, with participation of unions, technicians, government officials and broadcasting experts. The test result also showed technical problems of American system which is only used in Canada , USA and Argentina at the moment. After the test trip the Ministry agreed to review the digitalization process and to stop extension of infrastructure works. But it was broken by the government. Now the unions called for the Minister Jin Dae-Je, who broke the promise to stop the digitalization process, and made no attempt to stick to the original plan, to step down. If the Korean government goes the other way, the unions are planning to go on a strike to fight for the consumers’ rights and the national economy in the long run. 8. Organising Drive in the finance sector In January, KFIU (Korean Finance Industry Union) established a special union chapter for organizing part time and non-regular workers. This is to allow all part time workers to apply for organizing under the KFIU umbrella. This project took three years of internal discussion in the training courses provided by UNI KLC. KFIU plans to tackle increasing part time workers, who reached 40,000 employees or 30% of total employees in the 33 financial institutions. The slogan “ Crossing the discrimination wall, workers are one!” represents how unions envision the organizing drive, and the desperate need for developing trade union movement. In addition all current local unions mostly organized regular workers can organize part time workers into their unions. Jay Choi, UNI Asia&Pacific Korea Desk Contact: jayfree@kornet.net ______________________ Union Network International http://www.union-network.org - contact@union-network.org