Public Transport Union Condemns Government’s Agency Mergers and Relocation Plan as One-Sided and Hasty

South Korea’s Public Transport Workers’ Union has condemned the government’s plan to merge public institutions and consider relocating hundreds of them outside the capital, calling the announcement one-sided and rushed.

The government said it would reduce the number of public institutions by 109, including through the merger of five power-generation companies. It also announced that it would review the relocation of 350 public institutions to regional areas.

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Many mergers included in the government’s announcement have not undergone objective verification or a process of social public debate.

At a news conference outside the Seoul Government Complex on the third, the union said many of the proposed mergers had not undergone objective verification or public consultation. It also accused the government of pushing regional relocation without objective standards, principles or procedures. The union said a joint public-sector committee of the country’s two major labor federations had sent the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport its views on relocation procedures and selection criteria in July, but received no response before the government made its announcement.

Kang Seong-gyu, a union vice president responsible for public institutions, cited the earlier division of high-speed rail operations. In 2013, he said, the government split the service in two while claiming that competition would improve quality, despite opposition from railway workers and the public. The result, he said, was duplicated investment and inefficiency. Reversing the split took 13 years, while the burden and inconvenience fell on the public.

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The government is also pushing public-institution relocation to the regions one-sidedly and hastily, without objective standards, principles or procedures.

Unions at financial public institutions are also resisting possible relocations. Institutions mentioned as candidates include the Financial Supervisory Service, Korea Deposit Insurance Corporation, Korea Development Bank and Export-Import Bank of Korea. Their unions say moving away from Seoul’s concentration of financial companies, businesses needing funds and government agencies would reduce work efficiency and accelerate the departure of skilled employees.

The Korean Financial Industry Union is set to strike on the fourth, with stopping the relocation of financial public institutions among its main demands. It said the first round of relocations had not sufficiently reduced the concentration of activity in the capital region, and warned that institutions whose competitiveness depends on expertise and talent should not become test cases for a policy whose effects have not been proven.

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A policy whose effects have not been proven should not use financial institutions, whose core competitiveness lies in expertise and outstanding talent, as a test case.