[The Editors' Verdict] Why Don't Unions Change?

Kyung-ho Lee, Head of Social Affairs Division

The strike by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) National Courier Workers' Union (Courier Union) has been ongoing for about two months. On the 22nd, choosing the day with the highest delivery volume, around 120 union members blocked the front of CJ Logistics' Gonjiam Mega Hub in Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province, for about two hours, preventing more than 170 trunk vehicles over 10 tons from leaving the terminal. The number of logistics items passing through Gonjiam Mega Hub daily reaches approximately 2.5 million. On the same day, other union members staged a surprise protest by climbing the statue of Admiral Yi Sun-sin at Gwanghwamun Square in Jongno-gu. The union is demanding that CJ Logistics "implement the social agreement" and has taken such actions. Strictly speaking, CJ Logistics is a third party. The employer of the courier workers is the agency, and the union's counterpart for dialogue is also the agency. However, with illegal protests, assaults, property damage, and obstruction of business continuing for two months, the damage has spread not only to the company but also to agencies, client companies, consumers, and courier workers who are not participating in the strike.

Since the platform economy has become the mainstream economy, the government, political circles, and the public have paid attention to platform labor and platform workers. They have listened to the collective actions of platform workers, which existed before, and mostly accepted the cost burden for improving their treatment. Looking at the overall social changes, the labor sector has become less hostile and, in some ways, more favorable. A union has been established at Samsung Electronics, a representative non-union company, and is currently negotiating collective agreements. The composition of unions has shifted from mainly production workers to office worker unions recently, signaling a wave of change. Despite concerns about excessive legislation, the labor director system has been introduced in the public sector, allowing labor voices to be included in public institution management. The Serious Accident Punishment Act, which faced strong opposition and concerns from the business community, has been implemented, and the Industrial Safety and Health Act has been strengthened. Following the Gwangju I-Park collapse accident, the government has expressed a principled agreement to the enactment of the Construction Safety Special Act, which the labor sector has demanded and the construction industry opposes.

While the role and responsibility of unions are increasing, the KCTU, one of the two major trade union federations, is not changing but rather repeating practices that have continued for 20 or 30 years. According to the KCTU, from 1998 to 2019, the federation's executive committee declared and executed general strikes approximately 30 times regardless of scale. The executive committee did not declare a general strike in only five years (2007, 2009?2011, and 2013).

Voices of self-reflection have also emerged internally. Kim Tae-hyun, former policy researcher at KCTU, diagnosed at a forum hosted by KCTU at the end of last year that the conditions 25 years ago and now are very different, citing △a movement atmosphere divided by factions △a fossilized culture of struggle rallies △weakened cohesion between the federation, industrial and regional headquarters, and the field △and weakened creativity and spontaneity. He added, "Looking at the general strike struggles so far, it is unclear whether the demands of the struggle have been internalized as the demands of the union members themselves or clearly imprinted on the entire populace and the public; often, they remain mere obligatory slogans." Professor Noh Jung-gi of Hanshin University said, "It is hard to agree with the general strike tactics of the Yang Kyung-soo executive as a means to overcome overlapping inequality and crisis, internal faction confusion, and lethargy. Rather, it has a strong alibi character."

The phrases criticizing militant unions as ‘a strike in a drought’ or ‘union republic’ have become a thing of the past. In a changed era and environment, criticism of the union’s one-sided reliance on strikes that fail to gain public support will continue with the question, ‘Why don’t unions change?’

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