Yoon stresses labor reforms aimed at “vested interests” in New Year’s address

Posted on : 2023-01-02 16:47 KST Modified on : 2023-01-02 16:47 KST
Among the vested interests, the South Korean president named “well-paid, yet demanding unions”
President Yoon Suk-yeol gives his New Year’s address on Jan. 1 from the briefing room of the presidential office in Seoul’s Yongsan District. (courtesy of the presidential office)
President Yoon Suk-yeol gives his New Year’s address on Jan. 1 from the briefing room of the presidential office in Seoul’s Yongsan District. (courtesy of the presidential office)

In his New Year’s address on Sunday, President Yoon Suk-yeol stated that “there is no future for a country that is preoccupied with vested interests and rent-seeking.” He also claimed that he would push strongly for labor, education and pension reforms in order to “exterminate vested interests.”

Using the term “well-paid, yet demanding unions,” he stated that “those with vested interests are tenacious in their obsessions, and compromising with them seems easy and convenient. But we have never settled for a small sea.”

In using such phrasing, the president characterized labor unions as “vested forces” and made it clear that he would continue to take hard-line responses to their demands and industrial actions.

Yoon delivered his 2023 New Year’s address live on TV from the briefing room of the Yongsan presidential office on Sunday, in which he reiterated his willingness to push for three major fields of reforms, with labor reform at the forefront.

Yoon said his administration would “do all it can to ensure fairness in labor-management and labor-labor relations as well as improve workplace safety while flexibly adapting the labor market to meet changing demands.”

“The government must support companies pushing to transition to a duty-oriented, performance-based pay system in a different manner than it does with those that are preoccupied with a system based on seniority that seeks compromise with well-paid, yet demanding unions,” the president said.

Yoon emphasized the stance that he has maintained since the end of last year, during strikes by major labor unions in Korea: establishing “rule of law” in labor relations.

Regarding education reform, Yoon asserted that the government will transfer relevant authority to local districts and provide them with the support needed to link education to specific industries, noting plans to diversify school curricula so future generations will be able to receive their desired type of education, while ensuring equal opportunity.

Yoon went on to note the possibility of the world economy slipping into a recession in 2023 “higher than ever before,” and announced that his administration will employ “preemptive measures to keep the inevitable interest rate hikes to curb inflation from placing excessive borrowing costs on households and businesses.”

The president also claimed that he “will personally attend to our export strategy while focusing all diplomatic efforts on the economy.”

By Kim Mi-na, staff reporter

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