KCTU Update: Moderation at Last!

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), one of Korea’s two umbrella labor unions, elected Lee Seok-haeng, its former general secretary, as the new president in a vote of representatives. Lee garnered 482 votes from 919 representatives, or 52 percent.  [link]

With that overwhelming mandate, expect courageous and decisive reforms.

“With all my strength, I will do what should be done and won’t do what shouldn’t. I will restore our organization by studying situations on the spot, and from that ground I will start work for a strike or negotiation,” Lee said in his acceptance speech at Seoul’s Olympic Park stadium.

Sounds … meaningless.  Anything more specific?

Under his guidance, the KCTU’s main agenda item will be improving conditions for irregular workers and forestalling the proposed free trade agreement with the United States, he said.

On second thought, I liked meaningless better that counterproductive.  On the positive side, he did not pledge eternal loyalty to our lodestar and the father of our great race, Marshal Kim Jong Il.  Not publicly, anyway.

Lee entered the labor movement after he was fired from Daedong Heavy Industry Co., Ltd. and served as the KCTU’s general secretary until recently. He was jailed in 2002 for his labor struggle on behalf of an electronics parts manufacturing company.

A warrant was also issued for his arrest in 1999, when a   group of 15,000 KCTU protestors got into a street brawl with riot police and blocked traffic.  Interesting stats for the archive here:

The KCTU has a membership of 760,000 workers from 743 labor unions nationwide. It leads the country’s labor movement along with the Federation of Korean Trade Unions.