The Korean Financial Industry Union(KFIU) on September 10 held a joint union local representatives rally where some 6,000 union local officers and delegates participated to renew their commitment to a successful general strike planned on September 23.
These union local officers and delegates are those who are directly contacting and working with bank union members at work across the country. The KFIU has 34 union locals which will play a key role in mobilizing their members to the scheduled general strike.
The participating unionists made a resolution that if member mobilization to the strike action reaches to only 40~50,000, they may lose the struggle. But if they can mobilize the members more than 90,000, they will surely thwart the introduction of the performance-based wage system.
KFIU president Kim Moon-ho in his opening speech reminded the rally participants of the danger of the performance-based wage system by quoting the remarks made by Park Byung-won, president of the Korea Employers Federation(KEF) earlier this year that "If the performance-based wage system is introduced, our concerns on the extension of retirement age and the wage peak system will be resolved with it".
He continued to say that the performance-based wage system is the nitty-gritty issue to the labor flexibility and the retrogressive revision of the labor-related laws.
The Korea Public and Social Services and Transportation Workers Union(KPTU) is also planning to go on a general strike on September 27, through which both unions are expecting the significant synergy effects of the back to back general strikes by big industrial unions in the public sector.
KPTU president Cho Sang-su attended the KFIU rally to show his union's solidarity struggle which was warmly received with big applause by the rally participants.
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