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, Feb. 18 (Korea Bizwire) — A growing number of IT companies, including Naver and Nexon, have recently excluded “labor” from union names. In response, most workers have expressed optimism with the change.
According to a survey of more than 500 employees conducted by online job portal Incruit and part-time Job search app AlbaCall, 82.1 percent said they see the change in a positive light.
The biggest reason behind the optimism was because, as 37.7 percent of the respondents said, they could emphasize that the new unions were different from the strike-oriented traditional labor movement.
It is also interpreted that many office workers have antipathy to the existing strike-oriented labor movement.
Another 26.8 percent of respondents said that they felt optimistic because it was an “effort to improve corporate culture”, and 16.4 percent thought they would be able to approach the union with a sense of community.
However, there were also those who opposed the idea. The biggest reason was “I do not think the labor union needed to change its name,” accounting for 36.7 percent.
Another reason for opposition was even more specific. Literally because the purpose of improving working conditions is not clear if the word “labor” is omitted, the figure was 30.5 percent.
Meanwhile, the survey was conducted to find out whether office workers had the intention of joining the union. As a result, 51.8 percent of workers were willing to join and 37 percent were not.
If they had already joined or were willing to join, the reason was because of their expectations for improvement of working conditions, which accounted for 68 percent.
In particular, those aged 30 or older accounted for 48 percent, which was 2.9 percentage points higher than those aged 26 or under 30, which accounted for 45.1 percent.
Conversely, the reasons for not wanting to join the union were found to be that it would not improve working conditions significantly, at 18.7 percent, that it would not want to engage in labor union activities centered on strikes, at 18.3 percent, and that they might be disadvantaged by the company, at 15.5 percent.
Lina Jang (linajang@koreabizwire.com)
