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Civic groups gather in front of the Blue House to call for the ratification of key International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions on May 22. (Kim Jung-hyo

One of the obstacles blocking South Korea’s ratification of fundamental conventions of the International Labour Organization (ILO) has been removed. While the government previously maintained that the conventions should not be ratified until the issue of revising related legislation had been resolved through social dialogue, on May 22 it pivoted to simultaneously moving forward with ratification and legislation. That shift ends the debate about what will come first – ratification or the revision of related legislation. But groups representing organized labor and employers disagree sharply about potential revisions, and pushing those revisions through the National Assembly is not likely to be easy.

“Discussing a ratification and approval motion at the National Assembly will require examining how [the conventions] conflict with domestic law, and that discussion can’t go ahead without a specific plan for revising domestic law. [Ratification and legislation] will have to move forward hand in hand,” Employment and Labor Minister Lee Jae-gap said at the Government Complex Sejong on Wednesday. Lee’s remarks imply that the government will be taking the lead in drafting revisions to related laws as well as the ratification and approval motion.

Previously, the discussion of this issue has focused on social dialogue between labor, management, and the government about revising the law. Two of the four fundamental conventions that South Korea has not ratified (Nos. 87 and 98) concern the freedom of association, and they contain many passages that conflict with South Korea’s domestic laws governing trade unions, including those for public servants and teachers. The current laws block union activity by those who have been fired, the unemployed, people in special employment, public servants, and teachers.

Once ratified, international treaties have the same force as domestic law (according to Article 6, Clause 1, of South Korea’s Constitution). Ratifying the fundamental conventions without updating domestic law could create chaos in society, which is why the government argues that the relevant legislation must be revised first.

The discussions have not gone smoothly. A committee for improving institutions and practices related to labor and management relations under the Economic, Social, and Labor Council (ESLC, a social dialogue body that reports to the president) held 42 meetings through this past April without reaching an agreement. The main obstacle was the business community’s argument that, if workers’ right to organize is guaranteed, companies’ right to defend themselves must be guaranteed as well.

In November of last year and April of this year, the public interest members of the improvement committee proposed compromises that would allow terminated and unemployed workers to join labor unions, but their proposals provoked attacks from both labor groups and management. There was also an unsuccessful attempt to reach an agreement between the deputy directors of major labor and business organizations on the ESLC operating committee.

The ultimate failure of social dialogue to reach an agreement appears to have pushed the government to change its position on ratification. Another contributing factor seems to have been the continuing pressure that the government is facing from the ILO, which has proposed ratifying the conventions before taking other steps, and from the EU, which is moving forward with a conflict resolution protocol while urging South Korea to keep its promise to ratify the key conventions, a promise it made when it signed its free trade agreement with the EU.

But even if the government submits a ratification and approval motion and revised versions of related laws to the National Assembly at the same time, passage in the legislature will be an uphill battle. The biggest challenge is that the business community is sticking to the demands that scuttled the agreement in the ESLC, including allowing unlimited replacement workers during strikes and scrapping criminal prosecution for unfair labor actions.

“Employers are extremely concerned about the likely side effects of expanding the right to organize without taking any countermeasures. The compromise proposed by the public interest committee members does not represent the consensus of the ESLC, and furthermore is biased toward organized labor,” the Korea Employers Federation said on Tuesday, indicating that it’s gearing up for a fight.

On the other side of the debate, the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU), a national trade union center that is represented in the ESLC, said that “extreme care must be taken to ensure that this does not include matters that were requested by management despite being irrelevant to ratifying the key conventions, such as allowing replacement workers during a strike.”

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), another national trade union center, affirmed the same position. “We’re willing to proactively engage in deliberations about creating a plan for revising legislation provided that the current bill that was submitted to the National Assembly [based on the first ESLC compromise proposal] is scrapped,” the KCTU said.

Since the regular session of the National Assembly is being held in the shadow of next year’s parliamentary elections, it’s also possible that each party will be preoccupied with how its chances in the elections will be affected by legal revisions aimed at ratifying the key conventions. Most significantly, the Liberty Korea Party (LKP), the largest opposition party, is against ratifying the fundamental conventions.

The Environment and Labor Committee, the standing committee with authority over related legislation, is chaired by Kim Hak-yong, a LKP lawmaker who has expressed his opposition to ratification in crude terms, remarking that “this is not a matter that the Moon administration should be in a hurry to take action on, considering how it has screwed up the economy.”

Other LKP lawmakers on the Environment and Labor Committee held a press conference to address the issue. “The government is attempting to ram through the ratification procedure on the pretext of pressure from the international community, without adequate agreement in society about what effect ratifying the conventions would have in light of the deteriorating economic situation, the rapidly rising minimum wage, and the high-handed and hard-charging behavior of the aristocratic labor unions. The key conventions should not be ratified until legislation has been passed to compensate for the resulting inconsistencies,” the lawmakers said.

By Cho Hye-jeong and Kim Mi-na, staff reporters

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