While the financial and public sector trade unions continued to go on a series of strikes and Hyundai Motor Union moves to stage an industrial action, the Government warns of the decision to conduct the emergency adjustment. The Minister of Employment and Labor may make a decision for an emergency adjustment which will suspend any industrial action of trade unions immediately when it is officially announced.
The decision of the emergency adjustment is very rare, as it is only publicized four times in the past 50 years; strikes by the Korea Shipbuilding & Engineering Corporation Union in 1969, Hyundai Motor Union in 1993, Asiana Airline Pilots Union and Korean Air Pilots Union in June and December 2005 respectively.
When the emergency adjustment is conducted, trade unions are not allowed to resume the industrial action within 30 days and the binding mediation or arbitration shall be made by the National Labor Relations Commission. According to the Trade Union and Labor Relations Adjustment Act, an emergency adjustment shall be decided in the labor dispute cases when "there is a danger of impairing the national economy or the daily lives of the general public".
The reason why the Government is looking into the possibility of an emergency adjustment is the expression of concerns on the intensifying strikes which began with the strikes of the financial and public sector trade unions but now the strikes are inclined to spread to the private manufacturing industry. According to the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions(KCTU), on September 27 alone some 180,000 workers from the public and private sectors went on strikes.
reported by Kim Bong-suk
edited in English by Kim Sung-jin