hankyoreh

Korean Teachers’ and Education Workers’ Union president Byun Sung-ho (center) presses his lips together during a press conference outside the Seoul High Court in Seoul’s Seocho District

The Korean Teachers’ and Education Workers’ Union (KTU) lost its appeal to have its legal status recognized after government notification that it is no longer considered a lawful union.

With a court injunction suspending enforcement of the notification also lapsing, the union is now threatened with the loss of its legal status 17 years after its first recognition as a lawful union in 1999.

Judge Hwang Byung-ha of the seventh administrative division of Seoul High Court upheld the first court’s initial verdict against the KTU on Jan. 21 in an appeals case against the Minister of Employment and Labor to demand the overturning of the government notification. The ruling also restores the validity of the notification, which had been suspended until sentencing - leaving the union without its legal status once again.

On Sept. 23, 2013, the Ministry of Employment and Labor issued an order demanding the removal of nine dismissed schoolteachers in the union and ordering the correction of what it claimed to be a falsified version of the union’s regulation, which omitted terms allowing teachers to remain members even after they lost their jobs. Article 2 of the Act on the Establishment, Operation, etc., of Trade Unions for Teachers restricts union membership to current teachers only.

When the union refused to comply, the ministry issued a notification the following Oct. 24 stripping it of its legal status.

“As the Constitutional Court ruled in May 2015 that the Teachers’ Trade Union Act provision stipulating that a union is not considered a union if even one dismissed teacher is a member could not be construed as violating the Constitution, [the court] does not accept the KTU’s argument that this provision in unconstitutional,” the court said.

“The interpretation that an association bearing the name of a union according to the Trade Union Act should not be seen as a unity if it permits membership to people who are not workers is correct,” it added.

Following the decision, the KTU plans to focus on a Supreme Court appeal and an amendment to the Teachers’ Trade Union Act to restore its legal status. An intense conflict is expected between the Ministry of Education, which has been pressuring full-time unionists with the KTU to return to their jobs until a Supreme Court ruling, and the union, which has refused to comply.

Speaking at a press conference just after the ruling, KTU president Byun Sung-ho announced plans for a Supreme Court appeal. But the Ministry of Education has also warned of follow-up measures, including orders for 82 full-time KTU unionists to return to work.

“The Ministry of Education and KTU are both bound by the court ruling, so the Ministry plans to proceed with its measures from the first court ruling,” a senior ministry official said.

After the first court ruled in June 2014 that the notification was valid, the Ministry of Education ordered full-time KTU unionists to return to work and demanded that metropolitan and provincial offices of education exercise their authority to dismiss those who didn’t, in what many saw as a move the gut the union.

By Kim Ji-hoon and Jeon Jeong-yun, staff reporters

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