SEOUL– President Yoon Suk-yeol will review an executive order to force striking truckers to return to work at a Cabinet meeting, a senior presidential official said Monday.
“(Yoon) will preside over a Cabinet meeting (Tuesday) to deliberate on the return-to-work order for the Cargo Truckers Solidarity Union,” Kim Eun-hye, senior presidential secretary for press affairs, said in a statement.
“The rule of law in the labor-management relations should be firmly established,” Yoon said during a meeting with senior presidential aides earlier in the day, according to Kim. “It is important to firmly establish law and order regardless of whether illegal acts happen on the labor or management side.”
Yoon has warned of invoking the work resumption order as a nationwide walkout by the union entered its fifth day to demand the extension of a freight rate system guaranteeing basic wages.
“There is nothing that can be gained through illegal acts,” Yoon told the aides, according to Lee Jae-myeong, deputy spokesperson for the presidential office.
Yoon also accused the truckers’ union of taking the nation’s economy hostage and depriving jobs from the people who want to revive the economy, Lee told reporters.
Return-to-work orders are invoked by the minister of land, infrastructure and transport after a Cabinet deliberation.
The strike is the second of its kind in five months and threatens to disrupt supply chains amid post-pandemic recovery efforts.
Earlier in the day, the government raised its warning of a cargo transport disruption to the highest level.
Source: Yonhap News Agency