Seoul City Bus Labor and Management Reach Agreement, Mutually Agree on 3.2% Wage Hike

Negotiations on wages and collective agreements between Seoul's city bus labor and management were successfully concluded early this morning (the 16th).

Following the agreement between labor and management, the bus union withdrew its planned strike starting from the first buses at 4:00 a.m. today and decided to operate all routes normally.

The Seoul City Bus Labor Union and management, the Seoul Bus Transportation Association, reached a final agreement on the wage and collective bargaining mediation proposal during the second mediation meeting on the labor dispute held at the Seoul Regional Labor Relations Commission at 1:50 a.m. today.

Labor and management reached an agreement after nearly 12 hours of marathon negotiations, having entered the second mediation meeting regarding the wage and collective agreement at the Seoul Regional Labor Relations Commission starting from 2:00 p.m. the previous day.

Accepting the Labor Relations Commission's mediation proposal, labor and management agreed to raise wages for the year 2026 by 3.2%.

This is 0.3 percentage points higher than last year's wage increase rate of 2.9%.

The standard calculation hours for ordinary wages, over which labor and management had sharply clashed, were excluded from this agreement.

Labor and management decided to determine the calculation standards in accordance with the Supreme Court ruling regarding the calculation standards for transport companies' ordinary wages, which is scheduled for the end of the year.

Previously, the union did not back down from its stance that 176 hours per month should be applied as the standard calculation time for ordinary wages, following the intent of the second instance of the Dong-A Transportation ordinary wage lawsuit last year and the Supreme Court ruling in April of this year.

In addition to this, they demanded a 7.85% increase in hourly wages.

On the other hand, management and the Seoul Metropolitan Government countered that 230 hours should be applied, taking into consideration the agreed working hours between labor and management.

However, referring to cases from other local governments and following the intent of the court ruling related to ordinary wages, management presented the application of 209 hours as an alternative.

Viewing the resulting wage increase rate to be around 6 to 7%, they added the additional increase and proposed an increase level of 10.32%.

Labor and management left the issues related to the calculation of ordinary wages as future negotiation tasks and concluded the discussions after deciding only on the wage increase rate.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced that it has lifted the emergency transportation measures prepared in preparation for the strike and will operate public transportation normally as usual.

(Photo: Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.