"Labor/Management Relations to Worsen"

Most executives in Korean companies expect that labor relations will deteriorate because of wage-cuts and layoffs.
The Korea Employers Federation(KEF) announced its survey of executives' predictions on relations between labor and management on January 6.
The poll indicated that 22 percent of respondents expect labor relations to be 'fairly bad' and 43.9 percent predict 'a little bad' . Thus, 6.6 out of 10 people surveyed, expect already strained relations to get worse.
Many predict more unemployment as 63.4 percent considered further layoffs were in store. More than 78 percent revealed that wages should be frozen or reduced.
Labor's reaction was cited as the main reason for making relations worse by 34.6 percent of the executives. The situation in large companies or state-run companies, especially, is predicted to be very uneasy because full-scale restructuring in these sectors is expected to be severe.
Maintaining employment levels was selected as the hottest issue in collective negotiations this year.