hankyoreh

The labor community is reacting to President-elect Lee Myung-bak’s indifference to it and to labor issues. Surprisingly, it is the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU, Han’guk Nochong) that is speaking up the most. It was the FKTU that, during last year’s presidential campaign, declared it would support Lee Myung-bak for president and work with him on policy, in the face of criticism for being an organization of laborers that work against their own interests. In a recent interview, FKTU Chairman Lee Yong-deuk asked how it was possible to cooperate on policy while leaving labor issues by the wayside. “And with Lee (Myung-bak) supporting the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI), the Korea Employers’ Federation and the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry are afraid to upset the FKI, so the other two organizations are not going to engage in sincere labor negotiations,” he went on to say. “It makes no sense to go about saying you want to resolve issues through dialogue in such a situation.”

Maybe labor is upset because of how Lee Myung-bak has been making the rounds and meeting with big business leaders, while not so much as going through the motions with some regular post-election salutations for the FKTU, despite the fact it declared its support for him. However, the labor community is reportedly also concerned about how it has not in any way been invited to discuss labor issues such as the law on irregular workers. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU, Minju Nochong), for its part, recently issued a statement in which it said that a president-elect who wants to live up to the country’s hopes needs to give priority to looking after ordinary people’s economic interests, and the weak and neglected in society, and to extending them his hand, instead of doing so for the chaebols that have continued to fatten themselves since the Asian financial crisis of 1997. The mood in the labor community is an unsettled one, right from the start of the country’s new administration.

It is Lee Myung-bak who brought this reaction upon himself. In the course of its first meetings with government ministries and agencies, the presidential transition team said much about the “pro-business” directions policy would be taking, including things like doing away with cross-investment caps and regulations separating financial and industrial capital. Meanwhile it said almost nothing about issues of concern to labor. There is in fact not a single significant member of the labor community on the transition team who is able to convey labor’s thoughts and concerns. Since winning the election, Lee Myung-bak has busily been meeting with chaebol tycoons and top executives at financial institutions, but he has had no contact with labor and said almost nothing about issues of concern to labor organizations. Try as one may to understand it as his effort to “revitalize the economy,” it is way too focused on big business. It would be no exaggeration to say that Lee Myung-bak and the transition team has not shown the slightest interest in labor concerns and the labor community. That is truly something to worry about.

Does the president elect and his transition team think it can achieve the goal of revitalizing the economy only with investment on the part of the chaebols? Surely the country he wants to “serve” does not include a context in which laborers are excluded. We would hope he sees that you cannot have national unity, or even economic growth, by ignoring labor and its concerns.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]