Members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions hold a news conference in front of the Central Government Complex in downtown Seoul on Dec. 11, 2019, to denounce the Moon Jae-in administration for delaying the implementation of the 52-hour workweek among small and medium-sized companies by one year. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Dec. 25 (Korea Bizwire) — The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), the more militant of the nation’s two largest umbrella labor organizations, has become the biggest labor group in terms of membership for the first time, government data showed Wednesday.
According to the data published by the Ministry of Employment and Labor, the KCTU had 968,035 members at the end of 2018, while the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU) had a membership of 933,991.
It is the first time that membership of the KCTU outnumbered that of the FKTU since the former was launched in 1995.
The number of KCTU members has been sharply growing on the incumbent Moon Jae-in government’s labor policies that focus on helping part-timers become regular workers in the public sector.
KCTU’s membership was 711,000 at the end of 2017 and jumped 36.1 percent on-year to 968,035 a year later. President Moon took office in May 2017.
The data also showed that South Korea has a total of 2.33 million unionized workers as of end-2018, up 11.8 percent from a year earlier.
The number accounted for 11.8 percent of all employees in the country, marking the highest percentage since 2000, when it posted 12 percent.
(Yonhap)
