President Lee Jae-myung is set to hold a policy meeting with the leadership of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) on the 10th. As this will be the first one-on-one meeting between President Lee and the KCTU — which has not participated in the Economic, Social and Labor Council (ESLC) — since his inauguration, observers expect he may urge the union to return to the council. President Lee previously requested KCTU's participation in the ESLC during a luncheon with the heads of both major labor umbrella groups in September last year.
According to the Presidential Office on the 3rd, President Lee is expected to broadly discuss labor policy directions and pending issues at the meeting, which KCTU Chairman Yang Kyung-soo and others will attend. Following his invitation of the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU) leadership to the Presidential Office for a meeting on the 24th of last month, his arrangement of a separate dialogue with the KCTU is expected to accelerate efforts on key national agenda items including resolving labor market polarization and promoting social dialogue.
President Lee emphasized the need to resolve polarization, guarantee the three basic labor rights, and strengthen social safety nets at the ESLC's first-term policy debate on the 19th of last month and at the FKTU meeting on the 24th. At the FKTU meeting in particular, he stressed the importance of guaranteeing the rights to organize, bargain collectively, and take collective action, saying "workers are fundamentally the vulnerable."
Attention is now focused on whether the KCTU will join the ESLC following this meeting. The KCTU has not returned to the negotiating table since withdrawing from the then-Tripartite Commission in 1999 under the Kim Dae-jung administration. When ESLC Chairman Kim Ji-hyung was asked about the KCTU's absence from the inaugural ceremony of the Lee Jae-myung administration's first-term ESLC, he described it as "an incomplete ESLC" and signaled he would keep the door open for participation, saying "I will wait for the right time."
The KCTU has recently presented the establishment of a bargaining structure with lead contractors and the guarantee of basic labor rights for indirect employment, special employment, and platform workers as its core demands to the government. It declared this year the "first year of lead contractor bargaining" and argued that government enforcement decrees must not undermine the intent of the revised Trade Union Act. At a meeting with Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Kim Jeong-gwan on the 3rd, the KCTU also demanded a worker-centered shift in overall industrial and trade policies, including the activation of cross-enterprise bargaining, reflection of labor conditions in industrial complexes, and improvement of working environments at small workplaces.