Is it really a strike at that point? The company can just revoke leave in the future and call the bluff. Then they'll have to take unpaid leave and risk their jobs for real.
> Is it really a strike at that point?
IMHO, yes. A strike is about coordinated employee action to to disrupt employer operations. How strikers get paid while doing it is totally irrelevant.
> The company can just revoke leave in the future and call the bluff. Then they'll have to take unpaid leave and risk their jobs for real.
Which would be a massively shitty move on the company's part, and likely to motivate more employees to join the union. After all, getting all your leave canceled is a pretty material reduction in working conditions. Literally, "the beatings will continue until morale improves."
I have no idea what the relevant protections are like in Korea, but assuming that all workers always require management approval of fully-accrued paid time off is not always safe.
IIRC, this exact tactic happens in the US, but it uses sick time and is called a "sick out." I suppose that's because management can't realistically can't deny approval for an illness to infect you, so sick time can't be subject to the same kind of control as other leave.
The company is ultimately limited in how much they can punish the entire workforce without people quitting in mass for other work. Thus the inherent power of unions to negotiate.
If conditions are actually bad enough for people to be leaving it suddenly becomes much harder to recruit skilled people locally. Especially when there is news coverage of what’s happening.