Yoon calls for public disclosure of labor unions’ accounting

President Yoon Suk Yeol instructed aides Monday to look into establishing a public disclosure system for the accounting practices of labor unions, his office said.

During a weekly meeting with senior secretaries, Yoon told them to look into ways to establish an accounting disclosure system for labor unions similar to the Data Analysis, Retrieval and Transfer System (DART), an online repository of company filings operated by the Financial Supervisory Service, according to deputy presidential spokesperson Lee Jae-myoung.

“We should make sure to keep in mind that preventing corruption at labor unions and strengthening their transparency is essential to strengthening our industrial competitiveness and promoting worker welfare,” Yoon was quoted as saying.

Yoon was also briefed on the labor ministry’s 2021 statistics on labor unions, which included data that 46.3 percent of employees of businesses with 300 or more employees belonged to a labor union, whereas the equivalent for workers at businesses with 30 to 99 employees was only 1.6 percent.

“Domestic labor unions have not been able to properly represent the weak in the labor market,” Yoon said, according to deputy presidential spokesperson Lee Jae-myoung.

The labor sector is one of the top three areas of reform being pursued under the Yoon administration, along with education and pensions.

Last week, Yoon described corruption in labor unions as one of the top three types of corruption that need to be eliminated, together with corruption in public office and in business.