Will Kakao Really Go on Strike? The 27th Becomes a Turning Point [IT Item of the Day]

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[Financial News] With all strike authorization votes passing at five entities, including Kakao's headquarters, the possibility of the first strike at the company’s main office since its founding is being raised. There are also forecasts that labor-management conflict could spread into a group-wide general strike depending on the outcome of the second mediation session between Kakao headquarters and labor on the 27th at the Gyeonggi Regional Labor Relations Commission.
According to the IT industry on the 20th, the Kakao Branch of the National Chemical, Textile and Food Industry Labor Union announced the previous day at Pangyo Station Plaza in Seongnam City that strike authorization votes at five entities — Kakao headquarters, Kakao Pay, Kakao Enterprise, DK Techin, and XL Games — had all passed in favor.
Kakao headquarters is still undergoing mediation at the Gyeonggi Regional Labor Relations Commission, but it held its strike vote in advance.
Among Kakao Group affiliates, Kakao Mobility staged a partial strike for a week in June last year.
If four Kakao affiliates go on strike after this vote and Kakao headquarters also secures the right to dispute in the additional mediation on the 27th, the conflict could expand into a group-wide general strike.
The background of the labor dispute at Kakao is largely attributed to the performance-based bonus system.
The key issue in the dispute is the disagreement over the compensation system, including performance bonuses. Kakao posted record-high sales and operating profit last year, but in February it paid only performance bonuses equal to 3% to 9% of annual salary, depending on employees' performance ratings.
The industry had said that during labor-management talks, the union demanded performance bonuses worth 13% to 15% of Kakao's operating profit last year, but the union dismissed that as merely one of several proposals under review during negotiations.
The union said the cause of the conflict is not the headline bonus ratio itself, but the opaque standards used to calculate compensation and the wide gap between employee pay and executive compensation.
Earlier, on the 15th, the Kakao union also criticized AXZ CEO Yang Joo-il for what it called a "deceptive act," saying he resigned soon after the decision to sell the company through a stock swap with Upstage, less than a year after the spin-off was launched.
wongood@fnnews.com Joo Won-gyu Reporter