Buses are parked at a depot in Seoul on the Sept. 15, on the eve of a scheduled strike by the city's bus workers’ union.NEWS1
Seoul buses are set to begin a general strike at 4 a.m. Wednesday after wage negotiations between labor and management fell through.
This will mark the second such strike in eight months, following one in January. An average of 3.8 million people use Seoul city buses daily, thus public transportation users are expected to face major disruptions to their morning commute.
Some 7,000 city buses operated by 64 companies run on roughly 390 routes in Seoul.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government will activate emergency transportation measures as soon as the strike begins, including offering up to 1,500 free shuttle buses and increasing subway services during rush hours.
Subway operations will be increased by 202 trips per day. The city government plans to extend subway morning rush-hour operations by two hours, from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. It will also extend late-night operations so that the last train runs until 2 a.m.
The city's 25 autonomous districts will operate 1,300 shuttle buses connecting major hubs and subway stations, while the Seoul city government will dispatch an additional 200 chartered buses across 10 major routes, including Gangnam-daero, Tongil-ro and Dobong-ro.
Representatives of Seoul's city bus companies and unionized bus workers take part in wage negotiations at the Seoul Regional Labor Relations Commission in Seoul on Sept. 15. Talks failed to reach a breakthrough.YONHAP
The union representing Seoul city bus workers said it will begin its general strike as planned after a second round of mediation talks between labor and management were unable to reach a breakthrough. Talks started at 2 p.m. Tuesday and ran for eight hours. Last-minute negotiations were extended by another two hours to midnight, but the two sides ultimately failed to reach a consensus as unionized bus workers and bus operators remained locked in a dispute over how to calculate so-called ordinary wages.
The union has called for calculating ordinary wages based on 176 monthly work hours and raising wages by 7.85 percent. Bus operators have rejected the demand, saying the proposed calculation would effectively result in a wage increase of approximately 16 percent.
The union previously launched its longest strike earlier this year on Jan. 13, which ended on Jan. 15 11:55 p.m. after labor and management reached an agreement that included a 2.9 percent base salary increase and an extension of the retirement age.
