`Umbrella Union Members Started Most Labor Disputes`

Most of this year’s labor disputes occurred with unions under the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, the Labor Ministry said yesterday.

Ninety-five percent or 76 of 80 labor disputes between January and August this year involved unions belonging to the confederation, while the remaining four happened with those under the Federation of Korean Trade Unions.

The Korea Metal Workers’ Union accounted for 55 percent of the disputes, or 44 cases, and unions of the manufacturing industry made up 66 percent with 53 cases.

All 17 labor disputes against foreign-invested companies involved unions under the confederation.

The average bargaining period among companies seeing labor disputes was 132 days, new unions took 186 days and others 120 days. The average number of bargaining sessions was 16, with that for new unions was 19.5 and that for other unions 15.2.

Labor disputes led to a combined 660,000 lost working days, up 55.2 percent from last year’s 364,000 days. The figure was 647,000 days in 2001, 1.279 million in 2002, 1.087 million in 2003, 1.010 million in 2004, 434,000 in 2005, and 1.041 million in 2006.

The increase in lost working days this year was caused by independent labor bargaining of the metal workers’ union and long-term labor disputes.

The number of labor disputes, however, decreased this year by one to 80 cases from last year’s 81 per bargaining unit and 106 from 178 per union. the number of labor disputes decreased from last year’s 80 to 81 cases per bargaining unit and from 106 to 178 per union this year.

pen@donga.com