 |
|
Jun Jae-hwan, Head of the Federation of Korean Metal Workers
|
So-called ’irregular’ workers often left out of labor negotiations
The Federation of Korean Metal Workers has announced it will extend membership to contract and part-time workers, often excluded from the benefits of union membership. Jun Jae-hwan, 45, the head of the metal industry trade union, said yesterday, "The labor union is going to dramatically expand the number of irregular members from its current 5,000 to about 80,000 by October. We are going to make intensified efforts to have workers of Samsung, whose management policy is non-union, and POSCO, which is operating a ’ghost union,’ join the single industrial union," Jun said. As its member unions in large companies decided to transfer directly to the larger union en masse, the Korea Metal Workers’ Federation, affiliated with the Korea Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), will officially launch as a large-scale single-market industrial union in October.Jun, in an interview with the Hankyoreh, said that workers of Samsung and POSCO, a large steelmaker, are the membership campaign’s most important targets. Under the previous one-union-per-company system, each company had to establish its separate trade union under the larger group, but under this new industrial unionization drive, workers of each company may join their industry-wide union directly, making the process much easier for them and granting them additional bargaining rights, as well. Jun emphasized that the union’s imminent tasks are to restrict the high-handedness of large company management and to secure transparent accounting. "The single industrial union will help workers improve their [negotiating] power and will intervene in other matters to improve their working conditions," he said.
