Mando, Hanjin Heavy Industries, and 82 other companies in the metal industry are joining together to form an employers' organization and will be the first group of its kind to be one "according to the Labor Union Act." As such, it will have the authority to mediate and regulate labor relations. It will have genuine authority in negotiations, making it different in character from regular business organizations that can only make agreements that lack binding power.
Its counterpart organization is going to be the metalworkers' union, an umbrella group of dozens of unions. The new employers' group has until now lacked official status, making it hard to engage in negotiations that genuinely encompassed the whole industry, since individual companies could easily not follow along after there had been a labor-employers' agreement. That made it hard to build mutual confidence. Now that the employers' organization is official, that problem can be solved.
An important task on the road ahead for labor in Korea is to convert the system from individual company unions to industry unions and to be able to engage in negotiations accordingly, because by doing so labor can reduce discrimination between regular and irregular workers, workers at contractors and subcontractors, and others, and make union operations more efficient. Negotiating by industry will also have considerable advantages for companies. They can negotiate wages increases without worrying about upsetting other companies, and they will be able to avoid labor discord that originates in differences of working conditions at each place of work. One can also expect to see lower costs and more predictable labor relations through collective responses to labor issues. Employers may not be excited about having unions to deal with that are larger, but unions are going to feel the same way.
Negotiating by industry is spreading to other areas, such as finance and medical care. In the long run it will contribute to progress in labor-business relations, so labor, business, and the government all need to work to make it a permanent trend.
The Hankyoreh, 25 April 2006.
[Translations by Seoul Selection]
[Editorial] Korea's First 'Industry Employers' Organization' |
