Hourly pay to rise 5%; retirement age extended to 65

Ulsan to cover unfunded severance payments

Ulsan Mayor Kim Sang-uk announces an appeal urging city bus workers to refrain from striking at the city hall press center on Thursday. [Ulsan City]
Ulsan Mayor Kim Sang-uk announces an appeal urging city bus workers to refrain from striking at the city hall press center on Thursday. [Ulsan City]

Labor and management at Ulsan's city bus companies reached a wage agreement Friday, securing a 5 percent hourly pay increase and an extension of the mandatory retirement age from 63 to 65, averting a strike that had threatened to paralyze public transit across the city.

According to Ulsan City and the Ulsan branch of the Federation of Korean Trade Unions' National Automobile Workers' Federation, representatives from the six city bus operators and their workers reached the deal at a mediation session held at the Ulsan Regional Labor Relations Commission at around 3:50 a.m. Friday.

The agreement came just minutes before a strike was set to begin with the first buses of the day at 4 a.m. Had the six operators' unions walked out, all 709 buses across 108 routes in Ulsan would have stopped running, bringing the city's public transportation to a complete halt.

The two sides agreed on a 5 percent hourly wage increase, an extension of the retirement age from 63 to 65 starting in 2028, a 1,000-won raise in the daily meal allowance, and a pilot program for cashless city buses beginning in October. The cashless bus system accepts only transit card payments, which operators say will improve on-time performance and cut the cost of managing cash boxes, which runs into hundreds of millions of won.

The thorniest issue in the talks — 81.3 billion won ($58.9 million) in unfunded severance pay obligations — will be addressed through a fiscal support plan put forward by Ulsan City. On Tuesday, the city pledged to provide an additional 1.5 billion won this year and 4.5 billion won annually starting next year to help cover the shortfall.

As wage talks between the six bus companies and the union bargaining committee — under way since January — edged toward a strike, Ulsan Mayor Kim Sang-uk stepped in personally to urge restraint. At a press conference on Thursday, Kim said the city would "provide maximum support within the legal and institutional framework to ensure the stable operation of city buses," and called on both sides to reach a settlement "at a level the public can accept," noting that the burden of any strike would fall squarely on commuters and students on their way to work and school.


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