The Samsung Group superenterprise labor union's Samsung Electronics branch (superenterprise union) said it would make the government's Honam-region semiconductor investment plan a bargaining agenda item next year, but the Ministry of Employment and Labor (MOEL) drew a line, saying it is "not a subject for collective bargaining."
The ministry said in an explanatory note late on the 13th that "business management decisions such as corporations' investment and plant expansion are hard to see as having a substantial and specific impact on working conditions," adding that "under the revised Trade Union and Labor Relations Adjustment Act (the yellow envelope law, a new labor law aimed at strengthening the bargaining rights of subcontract workers), they are not included among the subjects of collective bargaining or labor disputes."
It added, "Even in the government's interpretive guidelines for the revised Trade Union and Labor Relations Adjustment Act, business management decisions such as corporations' investment, mergers, partitioning, and transfers by themselves are hard to see as having a substantial and specific impact on working conditions." However, the ministry noted, "If, in the process of implementing or realizing such business management decisions, there are substantial and specific changes to working conditions, the matters concerning those working conditions could become subjects for bargaining."
Earlier, the superenterprise union said, "Under the yellow envelope law, business decisions that affect union members' working conditions also became subjects of bargaining," adding, "Because this is a project that could affect the workplaces and treatment of tens of thousands of people, we will address the related matters in the 2027 bargaining." According to the union's own member survey, opposition to the Honam semiconductor project reaches 84%.