South Korea’s labor federation demands withdrawal of Yellow Envelope Law guidelines

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions has begun a two-week campaign to scrap government guidelines on the revised labor law, calling them employer-friendly and harmful to workers’ bargaining rights.

The federation held a press conference outside the Seoul Regional Employment and Labor Office on Sept. 4. It condemned the Labor Ministry’s guidelines on whether management-performance bonuses and other issues qualify as subjects of labor disputes, saying they “violate the three labor rights guaranteed by the Constitution and directly breach the principle of autonomous labor-management relations.”

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They violate the three labor rights guaranteed by the Constitution and directly breach the principle of autonomous labor-management relations.

The guidelines state that unions cannot automatically demand negotiations over performance payments linked to operating profits or over management decisions such as building, selling or introducing new technology at a plant. They also serve as a reference for labor relations commissions. The federation says the rules conflict not only with constitutional labor rights but also with International Labour Organization agreements that allow labor and management to decide bargaining issues autonomously.

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Most business sales are backroom deals that exclude unions, and until the day a sale is decided, workers hear that nothing has been decided or that the company cannot confirm anything.

The guidelines do allow bargaining demands when a business decision is objectively expected to change working conditions. That includes situations in which plans for layoffs, restructuring or worker transfers connected to a plant relocation or construction are being prepared or have been confirmed and announced. But union officials say this threshold comes too late, especially when companies keep sale plans secret until the final decision.

Kim Chang-gwang of the Service Workers’ Union Federation said workers need to question management and negotiate before a sale is completed to protect jobs and working conditions. He cited the case of auto-parts maker Woochang Connector, where workers were collectively dismissed after a court declared bankruptcy in January. He said the company had been profitable before selling valuable assets and then became loss-making.

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The government’s announcement that a dispute becomes eligible only after an objective confirmation of a layoff plan shows that the Lee Jae-myung government is pro-chaebol and anti-labor.

The federation also criticized the government for announcing plans to merge public institutions and relocate them outside the capital without consulting unions. It called for the guidelines to be scrapped, government intervention in bargaining classifications to stop, neutrality at labor commissions to be restored and workers’ right to strike to be protected. Chair Yang Kyung-soo said the federation would use protests to publicize what it described as the government’s unfair labor policy.

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If the guidelines are not withdrawn, we will have no choice but to conclude that the Lee Jae-myung government is attempting to restrict the three labor rights across the board, beyond damaging labor rights in mega-special zones.