KB non-regular employees face difficulties amid regular workers’ strike

“It is regular employees who are on labor strike. Why do we have to keep telling customers ‘we are sorry’?”

A 40-seomthing female employee who is working at KB Kookmin Bank’s call center said she felt miserable as she received a flurry of complaint calls right after the bank’s union went on the first round strike on Tuesday. She was bombarded with complaints such as “You, striking workers, are so selfish that you are on strike even though working in places where it is cool in hot summer days and warm during freezing winter" and "You have earned money by collecting interest that we are paying. What’s the matter with you?”

Attention is focusing on difficulties faced by non-regular employees and outsourced workers including staffers at the Call Center, and security guards. Working under poor working conditions with low salary, they struggled to resolve problems stemming from labor strike by regular employees whose annual average salary is 91 million won (82,000 U.S. dollars).

Information technology workers at the bank were also in emergency mode on the day of strike. As the number of employees attending at bank branches declined, automated and online transactions were expected to increase sharply. “Staffers in the IT department, mostly non-regular employees or permanent contract-based workers, seemingly have to take care of problems that regular employees have created,” an IT staffer said.

“The union leadership only collected our unionist fees and is behaving as if they are working to help us but does nothing for us,” said a non-regular employee who has worked for the bank for 20 years.


achim@donga.com · kalssam35@donga.com