Seoul bus strike reveals fragile transit safety net

Late on the night of Jan. 14, labor and management reached a last-minute agreement in negotiations over Seoul city buses. As the two-day strike, the longest in the system’s history, came to an end, buses returned to the roads with the first runs at 4 a.m. on Jan. 15. The city regained a sense of calm, but the experience has not faded for commuters who waited at bus stops in bitter cold, with wind chills dropping to minus 14 degrees Celsius. The dispute underscored where the burden falls when a society’s transportation safety net grinds to a halt.

On the first day of the strike, a sanitation worker identified only by his surname Kim, 64, waited anxiously at a bus stop for reasons that went beyond the cold. The first bus, which normally arrives at 4:06 a.m., never appeared. He learned of the strike only later through a co-worker. Kim said he spent most of his daily wages on a taxi ride to work that day, a cost he felt he had no choice but to bear to keep his job.

Unlike the subway system, Seoul city buses are not subject to a mandatory minimum service requirement during strikes. Even if all 7,018 buses stop at once, there is no mechanism to impose penalties. Still, amid the disruption, 478 buses, or 6.8 percent of the fleet, took to the roads. Their drivers voluntarily wore their uniforms, turned off fare terminals and carried passengers free of charge. Questions soon followed over who they were and why they chose to drive. After further inquiries, contact was made with one of them.

Lim Hyun-seop, a driver identified by a pseudonym, 63, explained calmly why he took the wheel despite the disapproval of his colleagues. “I could not bring myself to stay at the depot knowing that regular passengers would be standing in the cold waiting for a first bus that never came,” he said. He worried that people he greeted every dawn, including building janitors, school cafeteria workers and market vendors, might face threats to their livelihoods rather than a simple inconvenience.

He said he was particularly concerned about elderly passengers becoming isolated. Younger riders might use mobile applications to find alternative routes or call a taxi, but he believed regular passengers unfamiliar with smartphones would struggle to do so. Indeed, he said most of the first-bus passengers who boarded his bus during the strike were older adults.

Leaving the depot was not an easy decision when most fellow drivers were participating in the strike. “I felt deeply sorry when facing my colleagues. I am not opposed to the strike itself,” he said. Still, the thought that people who reminded him of his own parents would inevitably be left waiting at bus stops pushed him to act.

The differing positions of labor and management in the strike were understandable. The union’s demand to include regular bonuses in ordinary wages to raise real pay is a natural claim from the workers’ perspective. On the other hand, the burden on bus operators struggling with rising labor costs and on the Seoul Metropolitan Government, which spends about 4.5 trillion won each year to cover bus company deficits, cannot be ignored.

Regardless of who is right, the reality in which people who depend on the first bus at dawn to earn a living become hostages to labor disputes must end. Frontline drivers understand better than anyone that the right to mobility for early-morning workers is as vital as the union’s right to collective action. Labor and management have signaled another clash over the scope of ordinary wages. Before that happens, it is worth considering a mandatory minimum service system, at least for areas and time slots heavily dependent on buses. Such a measure could protect solidarity among working people while minimizing harm to the union’s right to strike.