43% of MZ Generation View South Korean Labor-Management Relations as Confrontational... Recall 'Strikes and Struggles'

Korea Employers Federation Conducts Labor-Management Relations Perception Survey Among 400 MZ Generation Participants

[Asia Economy Reporter Yu Je-hoon] Four out of ten domestic MZ generation individuals (born between the 1980s and 2000s) evaluated labor-management relations in Korea as "confrontational," according to a survey. Additionally, the word that first comes to mind regarding domestic labor-management relations was "strike·struggle."

The Korea Employers Federation announced on the 28th that these results came from a survey titled "MZ Generation's Perception of Labor-Management Relations," conducted with 400 MZ generation participants.

When asked about the overall evaluation of domestic labor-management relations, 34.6% responded "confrontational," and 9.0% responded "very confrontational," making a total of 43.6% who viewed it as confrontational. This was followed by "neutral (39.0%)," "cooperative (14.7%)," and "very cooperative (2.7%)."

Regarding the word that first comes to mind about domestic labor-management relations, 40.2% of respondents chose "strike," and 17.3% chose "struggle." Positive words such as compromise (5.0%), concession (3.0%), and harmony (3.0%) had very low selection rates.

When asked about factors that make labor-management relations confrontational from the perspectives of companies, labor unions, and the government, companies were most frequently associated with "poor working conditions (41.7%)," labor unions with "refusal to dialogue and compromise (34.3%)," and the government with "desk-bound administration (22.0%)."

In response to the question about the reasons why labor-management relations became confrontational due to companies, poor working conditions were cited by 41.7%, followed by unfair wage systems (19.0%), low wage levels (14.7%), employment insecurity (10.0%), rigid organizational culture (7.8%), and long working hours (5.3%).

Regarding the reasons why labor-management relations became confrontational due to labor unions, the most common answers were refusal to dialogue and compromise (34.3%) and excessive wage increase demands (28.0%). Other reasons included power struggles among labor unions (11.3%), exempted workers from working hours (10.0%), rejection of performance-based wage systems (8.3%), and illegal activities (8.0%).

In a survey asking whether labor-management cooperation is an essential factor for strengthening national competitiveness, 68.4% of respondents answered "an essential factor," indicating that the MZ generation also highly recognizes the importance of labor-management cooperation.

Hwang Yong-yeon, head of the Labor-Management Cooperation Division at the Korea Employers Federation, stated, "To create cooperative labor-management relations, companies need to make greater efforts to improve working conditions and establish fair wage systems, while the labor sector urgently needs to make efforts to resolve issues through dialogue and compromise and refrain from excessive wage increase demands."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.