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The government has threatened stern punishment against striking workers, but the country's militant umbrella union bodies vowed to stage bigger collective actions in protest against the government’s "anti-labor" policy.
The 25,000-strong union of Korea Railroad, or KORAIL, the state-owned railway monopoly, has staged an "indefinite" strike since Thursday, calling for wage hikes, better working conditions and the reinstatement of dismissed union leaders.
The striking workers are also demanding the government scrap its plan to overhaul KORAIL and other public companies that would cut jobs, and withdraw other measures that could hurt union activities.
The strike paralyzed 96 percent of cargo train service last week, with only 11 out of 300 daily cargo trains running normally. As the company mobilized military engineers and non-union workers from its passenger service to run cargo trains, freight train services were running at about 30 percent of capacity as of Monday.
But passenger train services, including metropolitan subway services, are also affected. Operations of passenger trains were cut back to less than 60 percent of their normal capacity.
Containers are rapidly piling up at the country's main ports and cargo terminals as cargo loading and unloading has been suspended. Port and terminal grounds were packed with piled containers with little space for incoming ones.
"We are making best efforts to raise the operation rate of freight trains," an official at KORAIL said. "But if the strike goes on for long, further disruptions will be unavoidable," he said.
The strike is estimated to have entailed a loss of 4.7 billion won (US$4.0 million) in the first four days, dealing a major blow to the rail monopoly that is projected to post 670 billion won in operating losses this year.
The walkout can also incur losses to the country's manufacturers, which are heavily dependent on product exports and raw material imports, according to the Korea International Trade Association.
Manufacturers have appealed to truckers to move their cargo in place of the railways, but the powerful Korea Cargo Transport Workers Union, which claims about 15,000 members, has rejected the request. Unionized truck drivers have also gone on strike in recent years, staging a four-day strike in June this year and a week-long walkout last year.
With mounting concerns about the crippling industrial action, President Lee Myung-bak ordered a tough crackdown on the railway walkout, calling striking workers "unreasonable and selfish."
"At a time when hundreds of thousands of young people are unable to find jobs, union workers at a state company who are guaranteed lifetime employment are on strike," Lee told his Cabinet ministers. "This cannot be understood and should not be understood by the people," he said.
Since taking office early last year, Lee, the former top executive of a construction company, has vowed to take stern measures against illegal strikes. He has pushed for a bill to ban wages for full-time unionists and introduce other measures to restrict military labor protests.
Lee has also taken steps to overhaul loss-making public companies, including KORAIL. South Korea's 24 major public companies saw their combined net profits plunge 93.6 percent last year from 2007, according to the report on public firms’ 2008 earnings by the Ministry of Strategy and Finance.
In response, the country's two umbrella union groups have threatened to stage joint strikes as a way to weaken Lee's labor reform plans, which they claim could restrict union activities.
Some companies have already voted for strikes. "We will make preparations for an all-out struggle against the government," the militant Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, which has some 500,000 members, said in a statement.
The Federation of Korean Trade Unions, with about 700,000 members, said it would go on a joint strike next month unless the government changes its stance by the end of this month.
