435 KTU Members To Be Disciplined

As the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development (MOE) announced its plan to take disciplinary measures by January 25 on a total of 435 members of the Korean Teachers & Education Workers’ Union (KTU) who had participated in the strike against the teacher evaluation system and the differential piece rate system last November by taking annual leaves all together, the KTU has decided to offer justifications and take legal actions.

The MOE made clear yesterday that it had sent its message to municipal and regional educational offices that the union members should be disciplined unless they attended the second disciplinary committee to be held until January 25 in each educational office to exercise their right of defensive statement.

Although municipal and regional educational offices held a disciplinary committee meeting from January 4 to 18 to summon the 435 union members who had taken part in the annual leave strike four times or more, a total of 434 did not attend even without an attendance waiver.

An MOE official said, “Unlawful actions by the KTU members are repeated because punishments have been too light. Now, severe disciplines are inevitable if the teachers referred to the disciplinary committees cannot give any evidence or proper clarifications that they did not join the annual leave strike.”

The KTU members who have joined the annual leave strike will be subject to heavy punishments, including an official reprimand, a punitive wage cut, and a suspension from office, on the basis of the National Public Service Law providing sincerity, obedience, prohibition of collective defection, prohibition of collective actions, and other actions.

The KTU kept its position not to attend the disciplinary committees. However, the MOE’s resolute measure has made the KTU determine to attend the second disciplinary committee to actively explain the legitimacy of the annual leave strike.

In addition, the KTU is planning to file an administrative suit as well as a request to Teachers’ Request Deliberation Committee, in case a heavy punishment is imposed. KTU spokesperson Jeong Ae-soon said, “It should not be subject to punishments, because the annual leaves are of legitimate rights for teachers. It would not be acceptable to move forward with punishments despite the controversial issues on annual leave disapproval and duplicated punishments.”

The KTU had taken annual leave strikes 12 times in total until last year since 1999 when the union was legalized. A total of 11 teachers out of 18,000 who had joined the strikes were given an official reprimand. This year is expected to see the largest punishment of teachers since 1989, when a total of 1,519 KTU members were dismissed.

ceric@donga.com