The Korean Finance and Service Workers’ Union(KFSU) has proposed to the companies that it is willing to freeze the wages of the regular workers when they convert the contingent workers into the regular workers.
The KFSU unveiled “an era of the industrial union with organizing target of 100,000 members through the social solidarity overcoming the barriers set between the workplaces” at the annual congress held at the Jungbu Seoul Womanup center in Mapo District, central Seoul on January 29.
The KFSU finalized its annual activities and demanded a wage hike of 4.4 percent, taking into account the economic grow rate of 2.7 percent and the inflation rate of 1.7 percent. What draws people’s attention is that the KFSU allowed its affiliates to make a proposal to their companies for the wage freeze. The KFSU plans to make a wage freeze proposal (excluding the inflation rate) when its affiliates and their companies convert the directly hired contingent workers into the regular workers or directly hire the agency workers or subcontract workers. The wage freeze will be also applied to the insourcing of the businesses which had been outsourced from the parent company.
The KFSU also decided the wage negotiation direction in line with the Ubuntu movement which will begin in earnest this year with the strategy of the expansion of the industrial union through organizing the unorganized contingent workers.
The KFSU held a social solidarity fund-raising declaration ceremony in April last year and announced its plan to “embark on the Ubuntu movement.” It made a pledge to raise the fund up to 8 billion won(US$7.2 million) by 2021. The KFSU Ubuntu Foundation acquired the establishment permission from the Financial Services Commission on January 11 this year.
The KFSU also adopted the resolutions concerning the employment stability, working hour cuts, workers’ participation in the management, and the expansion of gender equality. KFSU president Kim Hyun-jung said that “we will break down the negative perceptions toward the labor unions which people hold only represent the interests of their members, and also begin the social solidarity at our workplaces with the public suffering from the inequalities.”
reported by Yang Ou-ram
translated by Kim Sung-jin