The fallout from the rejected 2025 wage and collective bargaining agreement at KB Kookmin Bank is escalating into an intra-union conflict, showing signs of becoming a prolonged dispute. Two opposing camps have emerged: those demanding the impeachment of the union chairman for pushing through the agreement despite members' rejection, and those arguing the impeachment process itself is procedurally flawed.
According to financial industry sources on Wednesday, the emergency committee within KB Kookmin Bank's labor union met with union chairman Kim Jung on June 1 to request his cooperation with impeachment proceedings, but the two sides failed to narrow their differences. The standoff has now dragged on for two months since the emergency committee formally initiated impeachment proceedings in protest against the forced adoption of the wage deal.
The emergency committee conducted an electronic consent drive for the chairman's impeachment from February 23 to March 16, garnering participation from approximately 3,900 union members. After meeting the threshold requirement of more than one-third of total union membership, the committee submitted an impeachment demand against Chairman Kim to the Korean Financial Industry Union on May 17.
Under the union's operating rules, the chairman must convene a decision-making body within two weeks of an impeachment motion being filed. However, Chairman Kim has not complied. His position is that the impeachment demand was submitted to the Financial Industry Union, a higher-level body, rather than to the branch itself, constituting a procedural defect.
In a statement last month, Chairman Kim pushed back. "The impeachment motion must first be received by the branch because the branch, as the entity authorized to convene a general assembly, needs to verify its validity," he said. "The emergency committee is undermining the branch's autonomy by asking an external body to judge and resolve what should be handled internally."
Union members are pursuing impeachment because Chairman Kim decided to execute the provisional agreement despite its rejection in a membership vote during the 2025 wage bargaining process. In a statement on February 12, Chairman Kim announced the decision to proceed with compensation payouts, explaining it was "a decisive action to prevent a precedent where retiring employees fail to receive their performance bonuses." The intent was to execute the compensation plan before the March 13 deadline for paying performance bonuses to voluntary retirees.
The provisional agreement included a 3.1% base wage increase (3.3% for contract workers), a profit-sharing bonus of 300%, a special incentive payment of 7 million won, the abolition of the profit-sharing bonus cap with a commitment to restructure the profit-sharing system within the third quarter, and one additional mandatory annual leave day. Union members have objected to provisions including the 300% cap on profit-sharing bonuses and the expansion of mandatory annual leave, and have called for the leadership to be held accountable.