Half-Step Taken on Union for Officials

The government said Thursday that it would permit the Government Officials Union, an organization of lower-level (below Grade 6) civil servants, to form a national council that would give them central representation.

But the body is not likely for now to enjoy the three basic labor rights - to organization, to collective bargaining and to collective action.

"The Tripartite Commission on Labor, Management and the Government is allowing the union to have national representation," a senior Blue House official said. "But this does not mean that the council will have the powers of a trade union. The commission, however, will be discussing a possible future date for granting the national council the rights to organization and collective bargaining."

The official added that the national representative body would give nation's civil servants a central channel to negotiate for better benefits and work environment.

It was a campaign pledge of President Kim Dae-jung to allow the lower-level civil servants to unionize. Accordingly, the Tripartite Commission in 1998 allowed at least semantic unionization of civil servants of Grade 6 or lower. The Government Officials Union, born in January 1999, was the fruit of that agreement. It was understood that the union would serve as an alternative as the government moves in stages to allow civil servants to unionize.

Some 51,000 civil servants belonging to 66 central government and 146 local government agencies are members of the Government Officials Union. Altogether South Korea has about 850,000 civil servants.

Concerns of the potential impact of unchecked unionization have kept the administration from moving further, despite a strong push from the civil servants.

Meanwhile, civil servants from 16 government agencies including the Ministry of Government Affairs and Home Administration, the Ministry of Construction and Transportation and the Seoul Metropolitan Government held a press conference Thursday to announce the founding of a preparatory committee to launch a union for civil servants.

"The current union system has no legal or institutional backing for us to have true union powers. A union is necessary for us civil servants to enjoy basic labor rights and for reform of the civil service," they said in a statement.

by Kim Jin-kook