Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon urged the city's bus union to hold off on a full-scale strike planned for the 16th, saying commuters "must not be held hostage again." With the threat of another walkout emerging just eight months after a January strike snarled rush-hour travel, he also called on the government and the National Assembly to amend the law so that city bus service is designated an essential public service.
"It is by no means normal for citizens to have to worry about getting to and from work twice in a single year," Oh wrote on Facebook on the 14th. "Rather than putting a full-scale strike front and center and driving citizens into anxiety, please come to the table with a responsible attitude to the very end."
Seoul's bus operators and the union are at odds over how to calculate ordinary wages and how much pay should rise. The union wants the base hours used for that calculation set at 176 hours a month, along with an additional 7.85% increase in hourly pay. Management wants to restructure the base to 209 hours, reflecting a 10.32% effective pay increase, and then settle retroactively depending on the outcome of related litigation.
Oh said that accepting all of the union's demands could push the annual salary of a long-serving driver from about 68 million won last year to as much as 85 million won. "The intent of the Supreme Court ruling should of course be respected," he said, "but using that ruling as a hook to demand, all at once, a pay increase that places an enormous burden on the city's finances is by any measure excessive."
The union approved a strike on the 11th, with 96.25% of those voting in favor in a ballot on industrial action. The two sides have held nine rounds of talks since March this year without reaching agreement. If final mediation by the Seoul Regional Labor Relations Commission on the 15th also fails, the union plans to begin a full-scale strike from the first bus of the day on the 16th.
Oh also used the dispute to press his case for designating city buses an essential public service. Railways, urban rail and air transport carry that designation and must maintain a certain level of service even during a strike, but city buses are excluded.
"We can no longer leave in place a structure in which citizens' daily lives are shaken to the core by strike threats every time bus wage negotiations come around," he said. "The government and the National Assembly must move immediately, before it is too late, to amend the law and designate city buses an essential public service." He added that the city "will do everything possible so that labor and management can find a reasonable middle ground until the very last moment," stressing that "no cause can take precedence over citizens' daily lives."
Meanwhile, the city government plans emergency transport measures if the strike goes ahead, including adding 202 subway runs a day, extending last-train times and deploying free shuttle buses. The city is monitoring the negotiations while reviewing its preparations for transport contingencies.
