hankyoreh

held on June 21 at Mubong Mountain Youth Retreat in Pyeongtaek

By Jeon Jeong-yun, staff reporter

After a district court ruled to not restore the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union (KTU) official union status on June 19, the union reiterated its intention to resist with all of its power. With the union refusing to its full-time union staff back to their schools and the Ministry of Education expected to counter with disciplinary action, a vicious cycle of resistance from the KTU and punishment of teachers could be on the way.

On June 22, the KTU announced that it had decided to reject any and all measures that the Ministry of Education would take following the court’s ruling. This came after the union unanimously reviewed and accepted a plan to bring its full force against the government during the 69th national conference of delegates, held on June 21 at Mubong Mountain Youth Retreat in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province. The conference was attended by 295 of 463 total union delegates. The 64% attendance rate was significantly higher than the average of 53%.

In regard to the question of whether full-time union staff would return to their jobs as schoolteachers - the most controversial issue - the delegates resolved that they would not be going back. However, the conference delegated the question of how many workers would not be returning to work and the timing of the decision to KTU President Kim Jeong-hoon.

A KTU source suggested that around half of the full-time union staff (including the chapter heads of the sixteen provinces and metropolitan areas) would not be returning to their schools.

Since the Ministry of Education has warned that failing to return to school by July 3 would be cause for dismissal or other disciplinary action, a clash seems inevitable.

Another measure passed by KTU delegates will have not only full-time union staff but also regular labor union members risking punitive action as they fight the court’s decision to revoke the union’s legal status. First of all, teachers around the country will leave work early on June 27 to participate in a demonstration in Seoul. Unionists, who will be heading to Seoul after completing their morning classes, are planning to minimize the disruption for students by swapping classes with teachers who are not members of the union.

But the Ministry of Education intends to take disciplinary measures against those teachers, arguing that leaving school early and joining a demonstration during working hours constitutes political activity and collective action.

On July 2, a second teachers’ statement will be released, with more than 10,000 teachers taking part. In the first statement, which came out on May 15, the teachers called for an investigation into the tragic sinking of the Sewol ferry and punishment of those responsible, and the second statement is expected to demand the resignation of President Park Geun-hye.

When 43 teachers -using their real names - called for Park to step down on May 13, the Ministry of Education took steps to discipline them. It is possible that the upcoming moves could ignite a controversy about large-scale disciplinary action.

This morning the KTU released the results of the June 21 69th national conference of delegates. The outcomes were: calling for the withdrawal of the revocation of the union’s official and revision of the teacher’s labor union law; the drafting of a resolution calling for a special law to find a resolution to the Sewol tragedy; withdrawal of Kim Myung-soo, nominee for the post of Minister of Education (Kim has been criticized as an unfit candidate due to past scandals with plagiarism); and to stop moves toward creating a single government-sponsored Korean history textbook for high schools.

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