Seoul Metro Unions Set November 25 Strike Deadline Over Staffing and Safety

Seoul Metro’s largest union said on November 10 that workers will begin a work-to-rule campaign on November 20 and launch an indefinite general strike on November 25 if management and the Seoul Metropolitan Government do not resolve disputes over staffing, safety and pay. The deadline covers a system operating Lines 1 through 8 and sections of Line 9, making the negotiations a direct test of how South Korea’s capital funds essential public transport.

The Seoul Metro Labor Union says it has accepted the government guideline of a 3.5 percent wage increase, down from its initial 5.2 percent demand. The deeper conflict is over labor power and staffing: the union wants the authority to abandon a plan to cut 2,212 jobs and to recruit 1,313 workers this year, while also requiring two-person teams for field assignments and national funding for public-service costs.

The strike mandate is broad. According to figures released by the union, 7,782 of its 9,201 members voted, and 6,715—86.3 percent of participants—backed industrial action. Two other unions also approved strike action by large margins, although the organizations have not announced identical timetables. The two largest unions plan to join the November 20 work-to-rule action.

The work-to-rule campaign is designed around compliance with safety procedures rather than speedups. Workers say they will allow enough time for safe boarding, refuse tasks outside established rules and insist on two-person work in dangerous situations. Airport Railroad and GTX-A union members are also expected to participate, while the Korail union plans similar action beginning November 23.

FILE — City Hall Station platform on Seoul Subway Line 1, November 26, 2018. Photo: LERK/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

At a November 10 briefing, union representatives distinguished the wider demand for 1,313 hires from the most immediate staffing gap. They said long-term leave, unfilled retirements and other vacancies leave roughly 785 people absent from the workplace. The union argues that these shortages undermine two-person safety rules and force remaining workers into additional shifts.

Management and the city dispute the union’s account of the scale and causes of Seoul Metro’s financial problems. City officials say they are discussing how many long-term vacancies must be filled. Seoul Metro told local media that it would keep negotiations open and work to prevent disruption. Those responses matter, but they do not answer the union’s central contention: treating chronic vacancies as savings transfers the burden of fiscal policy onto workers and passengers.

The dispute exposes a familiar austerity mechanism in public transport. Authorities point to deficits and propose staffing cuts; workers then absorb heavier schedules and the public is told that labor action, rather than underfunding, threatens service. The union says policy costs such as free senior travel and transfer discounts account for a substantial share of losses and should be publicly funded instead of balanced through head-count reductions.

That argument belongs to a wider regional fight over who pays for essential services. South Korea’s recent antitrust penalties against Baemin and Coupang showed the state responding to corporate power in another part of the urban economy. But public transport workers are pressing the city to address power inside the workplace as well: staffing levels, safe teams and wages determine whether a system can run reliably long before a strike date arrives.

Seoul’s unions are still offering negotiations before November 25. Their timetable gives the city two weeks to choose a settlement over confrontation. As German metalworkers’ recent warning strikes also demonstrated, large strike votes are not simply threats to production; they are leverage against employers that otherwise set the terms of restructuring. In Seoul, that leverage is now focused on preventing job cuts from becoming a permanent operating model.

Cover image: Seoul Metro Line 1 train at Yongsan, September 26, 2023. Photo: Mtattrain/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.