The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions will hold a general strike in July this year as well, launching an all-out battle against Yoon Seok-yeol’s government. On the afternoon of the 7th, the National Confederation of Democratic Trade Unions (CTU) held a regular delegate meeting at KINTEX in Ilsan, Gyeonggi-do, and voted on this year’s business plan. The delegates’ meeting is held once a year as a place where 1,900 delegates assigned to each union under the KCTU gather to make decisions, and decide on the entire business and struggle plan for the year.
Yang Kyung-soo, chairman of the Confederation of Trade Unions, said, “The 2023 delegate meeting should be a place to decide the battle to fight the Yoon Seok-yeol regime properly.” For this purpose, the Confederation of Trade Unions decided to convert the Headquarters of the General Federation and related organizations into a battle headquarters. It was decided to hold a protest statement rally on March 25th, fight against the Serious Accident Penalty Act in April, and hold a general strike during the first and second weeks of July after holding a street rally for a general uprising of workers on May 1st. . During the two weeks of the general strike in July, large-scale street rallies will be held every day.
On this day, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions awarded ‘Outstanding Organization Award’ to subcontracting union Cargo Solidarity, Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, and the construction union for their successful struggle last year. In addition, there was reflection. He admitted that “the planned and executed large-scale struggle failed to increase the social ripple effect, and the KCTU’s political influence was weakened.”
The Confederation of Trade Unions diagnosed that “the policy of strengthening the Korea-US-Korea-Japan alliance by the Yoon Seok-yeol administration has intensified the war crisis on the Korean Peninsula.” At the same time, it was decided to continue the anti-American struggle this year. Last year, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions toured a US military base and trained commentators to oversee anti-American education. This year, he declared that he would intensify the fight against war and to stop the ROK-US joint military exercises and the ROK-US-Japan military alliance. He announced that he would also fight to dismantle THAAD twice a month.
However, there was also internal criticism of this year’s business plan. One representative said, “Last year, 200,000 people said they would go on a general strike, but the actual number of participants was less than 1/10.” Another representative said, “The plan to raise the wages of all workers is unrealistic.”
