Labor negotiations at Seoul's city bus operators were settled dramatically just two hours before the union's scheduled strike. The Seoul Bus Transport Business Association and the Seoul Bus Labor Union accepted a 3.2% wage increase for 2026 proposed by the Seoul Regional Labor Relations Commission in the early hours of the 16th. The city avoided the worst outcome — a halt to bus service used by an average of 4 million people a day, which would have been the second stoppage in eight months after a full strike in January. But the embers of conflict are still burning. The two sides agreed only on the base pay increase, setting aside the central dispute over ordinary wages. Because talks on ordinary wages have been pushed back until after a Supreme Court ruling expected late this year, it is hard to rule out a repeat of labor conflict and another strike.
The gap over the standard hours used to calculate ordinary wages remains unbridged, with management proposing 209 hours and the union demanding 176. Applying 176 hours would amount to a 16.44% pay increase. On top of that, the union is demanding an additional 7.85% rise in the hourly wage. Management and the Seoul city government estimate that under the union's proposal, an annual deficit that already reaches 500 billion won would swell to 1 trillion won. That snowballing shortfall can only be covered by Seoul taxpayers' money. Under the semi-public bus operating system introduced in 2004, the city must make up the gap between bus operating costs and fare revenue out of its budget. Hundreds of billions of won in taxes are poured in every year to prop up loss-making operations, yet the union holds citizens hostage to enlarge its own share — a structural vicious cycle that keeps repeating.
It is time to overhaul the semi-public bus system, which for more than 20 years has fed both union excess and lax management. Scrapping the system outright is not the answer, of course, if the city is to guarantee mobility for people who are most easily left out of public transportation. To preserve what is useful about the system while minimizing its side effects, it should be redesigned to strengthen accountability and transparency — replacing full deficit coverage with a preset ceiling on financial support, and tightening audits of the operators' books. The city should also actively pursue designating city buses as an essential public service, alongside railways and urban rail, so that a minimum level of service is maintained even during a strike.
