Seoul's city buses avoided an unprecedented second strike in a single year, but labor and management failed to settle the dispute over how ordinary wages are calculated, leaving the conflict unresolved.
The two sides accepted a mediation proposal from the Seoul Regional Labor Relations Commission early on the 16th and reached a wage and collective bargaining agreement, according to the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Seoul City Bus Labor Union under the Federation of Korean Automobile and Transport Workers' Unions. The deal came just over two hours before a strike set to begin at 4 a.m. The two sides agreed to raise wages 3.2% this year while excluding from the agreement the standard hours used to calculate ordinary wages, the biggest sticking point in the talks.
Both sides are seen as having stepped back to avoid the costs of a walkout, with little prospect of narrowing the gap on ordinary wages in a short time. Under the no-work, no-pay principle, union members would have absorbed wage losses had the strike gone ahead. For the city government and management, halting a bus system used by about 3.8 million riders a day would have caused widespread inconvenience and forced them to activate emergency transport measures.
While an immediate strike was averted, leaving the core issue untouched raises the prospect of renewed conflict. The union argues that the standard for calculating ordinary wages should be set at 176 hours a month, citing Supreme Court rulings including one involving Dong-A Transportation. Management counters that 230 hours should apply. The city government says applying the 176-hour standard would add about 220 billion won ($158 million) in annual costs, a burden it says it cannot accept.
The ordinary wage question is expected to be the biggest issue in the next round of wage and collective bargaining as well. The current wage agreement runs through Jan. 31 of next year, with the next negotiations beginning in February. If the two sides fail to resolve their differences over the calculation standard by then, another strike threat could emerge as early as the first half of next year.
With strike fears recurring, some argue that Seoul's city buses should be designated an essential public service, a legal mechanism that would guarantee minimum operations even during a walkout. Lim Sam-jin, head of the Green City Research Institute, said, "Seoul city buses are run under a semi-public operating system, so they should be included in essential public services."
