Seoul labor panel rules seniority dispute off the table

Talks to continue through Oct. 27, excluding ranking issue

An Asiana Airlines aircraft bearing Korean Air's new livery lands on a domestic runway at Gimpo Airport in Seoul. [Yonhap]
An Asiana Airlines aircraft bearing Korean Air's new livery lands on a domestic runway at Gimpo Airport in Seoul. [Yonhap]

Korean Air has averted a pilot strike for the first time in a decade after the pilots' union withdrew its labor dispute mediation request, allowing negotiations with management to resume.

Industry sources said Wednesday that the Korean Air Pilots Union (KAPU) accepted a recommendation from the Seoul Regional Labor Relations Commission and withdrew its mediation request. The union had filed the request with the Seoul panel on Sept. 7 after collective bargaining and wage talks broke down without an agreement.

The commission determined that including the pilot seniority dispute — stemming from the merger of Korean Air and Asiana Airlines — on the collective bargaining agenda would make normal labor-management negotiations unworkable. It persuaded the union to withdraw the mediation request and proceed with talks while setting the seniority issue aside.

Under the resulting recommendation, the two sides plan to continue negotiations toward a 2024 collective agreement and a 2025 wage agreement through Oct. 27. The deadline may be extended by mutual agreement, and seniority-related matters will not be addressed during that period.

The union's mediation filing was its first since December 2015. After failing to narrow differences with management in the 2015 wage talks, the union staged a seven-day strike in December 2016.

The union has objected to management's unilateral drafting of a seniority proposal, citing Article 24 of the collective agreement, which states that the company must abide by a pilot seniority system determined through labor-management agreement.

Korean Air has countered that it developed a neutral promotion seniority proposal through external consulting, and that promotion decisions fall under management's exclusive personnel authority and cannot be subject to mediation. The airline said the external consulting process was intended to minimize conflict during the integration with Asiana Airlines.

"We will engage sincerely in future negotiations while maintaining the principle that seniority is an inherent management prerogative," Korean Air said.


eyre@heraldcorp.com