After nine months of stagnation, the KakaoBank(323410) labor-management wage and collective agreement (wage and collective bargaining) reached a broad agreement four days before the labor union's general strike. The management plans to speed up the remaining detailed talks to reach a tentative agreement in early September and wrap up the procedures.
According to the financial sector on the 27th, the KakaoBank union canceled the full-scale general strike that had been scheduled to run for five consecutive days from the 31st to the 4th of next month. KakaoBank labor and management held talks for about six hours from 3 p.m. the previous day. Afterward, the union said, "A broad agreement has been reached. We plan to share the details of the agreement through member channels as soon as they are finalized."
An internal KakaoBank official said, "Now that the negotiations have a breakthrough, we aim to move as quickly as possible and finish everything by early September. Unless one side of labor or management overturns what was agreed to the previous day, the remaining talks should proceed smoothly."
Labor and management are said to have narrowed their differences on bonuses and the annual salary increase rate, the biggest sticking points in this negotiation. For bonuses, management had proposed paying around 10% of operating profit by combining cash and treasury shares, but the union demanded more. The annual salary increase rate was negotiated at around the high-6% range.