Marathon talks held in Seoul between employees, employers and labor experts aimed at setting the minimum wage for next year broke down again Wednesday.

The 15-hour meeting of the Minimum Wage Council ended in collapse Wednesday morning, with employees’ representatives walking out of the talks in opposition to labor experts’ suggestion to put a cap on how much the minimum wage should be raised by.


At the end of the dragged-on discussion, labor experts proposed that the next year’s minimum wage should increase by 6.5 percent to 9.7 percent, prompting the labor representatives to leave the meeting in protest.

The move came as part of efforts to accelerate the negotiations after the labor circle and business bloc continued to clash over the extent of the wage hike.

The labor unions have initially demanded a 79 percent rise from the current minimum hourly wage at 5,580 won ($4.99) to 10,000 won, while employers have campaigned for a freeze.

But after the negotiations failed to meet a June 29 legal deadline, both sides presented revised proposals to secure a deal through additional discussion.

At Wednesday’s meeting, the business leaders suggested that the minimum wage be 5,715 won, while laborers proposed 8,100 won.

“The labor experts’ suggested a single-digit growth in the minimum wage, defying all Koreans’ and Choi Kyung-hwan’s expectations,” Kim jong-in, a deputy head of Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, said, explaining the reason behind the laborers’ exit.

Choi is the finance minister and deputy prime minister, who supported a “fast-paced” hike in the minimum wage to spur consumer spending and economic growth.

The Minimum Wage Council called a meeting for Wednesday afternoon to reach a deal, but the prospect of this remains bleak as the labor circles are considering boycotting the meeting to signify its opposition to the labor experts’ proposal.

The Korea Employers Federation has claimed that the minimum wage has risen too rapidly and it needs to be stabilized, voicing concerns over possible job losses and soaring production costs.

The nation’s trade unions have maintained that the hike would curb the nation’s income inequality and boost consumer spending.

Since the government adopted the minimum wage in 1989, the Minimum Wage Council, a trilateral committee of employers, employees and labor specialists, has set the minimum wage through discussion.

This year, the discussion began in early June with an aim of reaching a conclusion by June 29. The government is due to announce next year’s minimum wage rate for next year on Aug. 5.

By Ock Hyun-ju (laeticia.ock@heraldcorp.com)