<Anchor>
Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) filed a claim for damages of 47 billion won against subcontractor workers who took up strike at the Geoje shipyard last summer.
With this as an opportunity, legislation to restrict companies from claiming damages to strikers is being pushed again.
The so-called 'Yellow Envelope Act', which provides indulgences to illegal strikes and protects workers from compensation for damages, is controversial.
First, let's look at the reports of reporters Jae Hee-won and Jung Jun-ho.
<Reporter Hee-won Je>
After the strike against the layoffs of Ssangyong workers 13 years ago, the court ordered them to pay 4.7 billion won in compensation.
Then, a citizen sent a yellow envelope containing 47,000 won to the media saying they wanted to share the amount of compensation.
I have personally met workers who are still suffering from compensation for damages.
He returned to work after the struggle for reinstatement, but the lawsuit has been going on for 13 years.
The amount of damages that the union and union members have to pay has increased to 12 billion won.
[Kim Jung-wook / Former Secretary General of Ssangyong Branch: My belly button is bigger than my stomach.
The daily (indemnity) late interest is over 600,000 won.
It's a stigma for us.]
A claim for damages of 90 million won to three union members who stopped the operation of the machine due to the risk of an accident.
[Kim Jung-hyun / Vice President of Hankook Tire Branch: We all have children, and our salaries are low.
(I exercised the right to stop work) If I asked you to ask for 90 million won, who would fight the irrationality?]
The non-regular workers who occupied and strike to keep their employment promise to the Woncheong, who broke the dispatch law, received a complaint of 24.6 billion won.
[Lee Sang-gyu / Hyundai Steel Non-regular Branch Chairman: “What if I get hurt again?” There is such a fear.
How many people will be able to withstand the actual foreclosure?]
A strike is no work, no pay, so it is a last resort.
Workers go on strike because of unfair labor practices such as refusal of collective bargaining and violation of the Labor Standards Act, but the company claims to fight back.
[Yoon Ji-sun / activist with a civic group: As a result, workers engage in industrial action because the company commits illegality.
I am using the provisional seizure of damages as an eraser to erase the company's illegality.]
So far, the amount of damages claimed to workers is 316 billion won, mostly directed to the individual workers.
---
<Reporter Jung Jun-ho>
You cannot claim compensation for 'legal industrial action'.
However, the scope of this 'legal' is so narrow that it is the core of the Yellow Envelope Act to broaden it.
In other words, we want to put into the scope of 'legal' issues with disagreements between labor and management, such as strikes, layoffs, and strikes against privatization of 'delivery, freight, and subcontractor workers' directed at the original contractor, even though they did not directly sign a labor contract.
Violence and vandalism can be sued for damages, but not against individual workers.
The business community refutes it, calling it the 'union bulletproof law'.
[Hwang Yong-yeon / Head of Labor Policy Headquarters of the Korea Federation of Economy and Trade,
It is a serious violation of the user's property rights.]
The business community is concerned that if the Yellow Envelope Act is enforced, there will be no choice but to keep an eye on the damage caused by illegal activities.
As in the case of Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, even if a subcontractor took over and inflicted damage on the primary business site, it would not be possible to file a claim for damages itself unless violence or vandalism was accompanied.
Even if the union is led, workers argue that even using violence, it can be abused to avoid lawsuits.
<Reporter Hee-Won Jae>
However, the workers think differently.
In the eyes of the union, large sums of damages are a means of coercing the union, such as withdrawing a strike.
This is a document containing the strategy to break up the union at Yuseong Enterprise, an auto parts maker, in 2011.
It invalidates the labor rights guaranteed by the Constitution by threatening to scare them away from the complaint and withdrawing the lawsuit if they leave the union.
Since the exercise of labor rights is mostly decided by the group, the position of the labor community is that if accountability has to be held, the union should be held accountable, not each worker as it is now.
<Reporter Jung Jun-ho>
There is another issue.
Business circles worry that it will create confusion over who will be seated at the union and bargaining table.
If you can't communicate with the company that signed the contract with you, you may be asked to negotiate with the principal or even the business partner.
Even now, they argue that there is a need to make a law even though the real 'users' can be sufficiently investigated through litigation.
<Reporter Hee-Won Je>
Like Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, subcontractor workers work at the primary office and without them, the primary agency cannot run, but the primary agency has avoided dialogue by saying that it is not the direct employer.
It would be illegal for subcontractors to strike against a subcontractor, but since the main subcontractor and subcontractor are inseparable, we want to change the rules to suit reality.
The labor community says that negotiating with the principal employer, the actual employer, will reduce industrial action.
(Video coverage: Kim Se-kyung, Park Jin-ho, video editing: Lee Seung-hee, CG: Seo Seung-hyun, Choi Ha-neul, Seo Dong-min, Jeon Yu-geun)