hankyoreh

Members of the KCTU’s Korean Construction Workers’ Union stand off against police during the police raid of their offices in northern Gyeonggi on Jan. 19. (Shin So-young/The Hankyoreh)

In just one day, the police conducted simultaneous raids of a total of 34 locations, including offices of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and Korean Federation of Trade Unions (FKTU), to investigate alleged illegal activities at construction sites by labor unions.

The police and National Intelligence Service (NIS) had previously raided the headquarters of the KCTU on Wednesday based on charges of violating the National Security Act.

The labor community is protesting the government’s actions, calling it full-scale labor union “bashing” by going after construction unions now after last year’s truckers strike.

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's violent crimes team sent investigators and conducted search and seizures at the Seoul Gyeonggi Northern Branch of the KCTU’s construction union and five of its offices in the southwest, northwest, southeast, and northeast regions, three regional offices of construction unions which were expelled from the FKTU last year, and the office of the Korea Union Construction Industry Labor Union.

In addition, five smaller labor union offices, including the Korean Democracy and Federacy Workers’ Union, as well as the residences of labor union officials were also subject to search and seizure, bringing the total raided locations to 34.

All material related to union activities were subject to confiscation, such as personal phones, documents related to negotiations, meetings, and recruitment, and official documents exchanged with higher-level organizations. The police say they confiscated “about 17,000 pieces of electronic information, including 22 cell phones.”

Members of the KCTU’s Korean Construction Workers’ Union stand off against police during the police raid of their offices in northern Gyeonggi on Jan. 19. (Shin So-young/The Hankyoreh)

About 20 former and current labor union executives are being charged with joint coercion and joint intimidation for forcing officials affiliated with construction sites to hire their union members from late 2020 to early 2022 and then demanding money and other valuables if they were not hired or conducting acts of punishment or violence.

The police say that these construction unions demanded their members be hired at construction sites and then held strikes if their demands were not met. Whether the union demanded full-time labor wages from companies that did not hire the members is also being subject to investigation.

“We will be investigating whether this is an illegal act done at the union level and not individual aberration,” an official with the police said.

With unions being subject to search and seizure for two days in a row, the labor community is enraged. These recent moves are also raising suspicions that this is in fact a targeted investigation spearheaded by the current government, which is suppressing labor movements, and not an ordinary investigation aimed at revealing crimes.

In fact, soon after President Yoon Suk-yeol brought up the need for “labor reform” in his New Year’s address, a meeting was held on Jan. 5 led by Prime Minister Han Duck-soo to discuss measures to root out illegal activities at construction sites.

“The search and seizure of construction unions appears to be an intentional act to cause public resentment by painting the labor unions as corrupt organizations and to turn the arrows of criticism aimed at the government toward the unions,” a spokesperson for the FKTU said in a briefing, adding that the government is benefiting from this situation.

“Activity concerning employment stability for construction workers is the basic responsibility and an indispensable activity of unions,” the construction union under the KCTU said in a press conference on Thursday. “Defining this as an illegal act and branding it [this way] is [a form of] suppression of labor unions,” they said.

By Lee Woo-yun, staff reporter; Park Tae-woo, staff reporter

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