ING must improve social dialogue in Korea
UNI Korean affiliate strongly urge ING to use the legendary Dutch Model to overcome the economic crisis through social dialogue. UNI and its affiliates express great concerns on ING’s irresponsible attitude towards ING Life Korea union.
According to the press, ING received significant funds from the Dutch government (a total fund injection of 10 billion EURO in the middle of 2008) to overcome the global financial crisis but the company then decided to sale out the ING Life Korea business. KB Financial Group, one of the big financial institutions in Korea joined in the bidding. ING Life Korea showed a record breaking business growth by taking the 4th rank in terms of total premium income in 2004. In fact ING Life Korea sale is not a matter of business loss but a matter of big profits. Despite these positive results, ING Life Korea management rejected the union demands for safer employment conditions, neglected the minimum level of corporate social responsibility and now continues to take very anti-union and anti-social measures by refusing social dialogue in Korea.
Given this situation, ING Life Korea union had to no other choice than coming out of its patience mode and plan for a strike on the 31st of July.
ING Life Korea is now also calling for the protection of irregular workers and equal opportunities for regular and irregular workers after the sale.
UNI affiliates in Korea and its 350,000 members would like to express their solidarity with ING Life Korea effort to prevent ING’s from continuing its bad practices of huge profit-making and runaway strategies, without taking any responsibility for the employees and customers in Korea.
ING Korea started its business in 1989 with a large capital and several trillions of earning have been made since that, mainly profiting the shareholders while workers wages have been kept at a fairly low level. However ING Life Korea decided to undertake a Business Contingency Plan as a disguised strategy for union busting and strike prevention, while avoiding good faith social dialogue with the union.
Moreover, according to the Financial Supervisory Services, ING Life Korea undertook some illegal practices by using internal cash flow mechanisms to invest its profits in other countries. Even more concerning is the fact that ING Life Korea union is pushing hard sales contractors to bring in new contracts without proper procedures of investigation and credit analysis. It will definitely undermine the local insurance market and out policyholders at risk. But at the end the sales contractors will be blamed for these unhealthy practices which is aimed at increasing the value of the company in the process of sale.
According to the media, ING will hold a Supervisory Board this week and finalize the sale by the end of August. Even until now, after two weeks of strike, there is still no action undertaken by the company to consult the unions. This is unacceptable for all Korean unions which will join the ING Life Korea union’s struggle for employment guarantees for all regular and irregular workers and for better corporate social responsibility. If ING doesn't take any step towards social dialogue with unions immediately, the unions will file a complain to the OECD MNC in cooperation of UNI Global Union and other Dutch union colleagues in the Netherlands in a joint global campaign.
ING Life Korea Union/KFCLU(Korea Federation of Clerical & Finance Union)/
UNI Global Union-Korean Affiliates