The ruling Saenuri Party and leaders of government workers’ unions and a teachers’ union held a meeting Friday on the reform of the deficit-ridden pension for civil servants. They had previously agreed to hold discussions without a fixed ending time.

But the meeting came to an end in just half an hour as the union leaders marched out of the room, accusing Saenuri officials of rejecting their demand to establish a body to form social consensus and withdraw the plans to complete the reform by the end of the year. They even refused to shake hands with the meeting participants, including the party’s leader Kim Moo-sung.

Few expected the meeting to provide a solution, or even a clue to resolving the knotty problem. Still, it is disappointing that the union representatives threw away the precious chance to listen and talk to ruling party officials, demonstrating their headstrong resistance.

The meeting took place one day after members of hard-line government workers’ unions scuttled a forum on the pension reforms in Gwangju. The protesting unionists occupied the venue and threw water at government officials who were preparing the forum. They are now attacking even their colleagues.

The Gwangju forum is the fourth such conference that members of the government workers’ unions have broken up through physical force. The protesters have no qualms about making a scene, occupying seats, manhandling panelists and using foul language. In Chuncheon, protesters even shattered the nameplate of a vice minister.

Civil servants are supposed to stand at the forefront of safeguarding the social order and the rule of law. However, the people we saw at these forums are nothing but a mob.

It may well be painful to accept the pension reform ― which will make them pay more and receive less ― but using physical force is not a proper method of protest for government workers.

Their irrational resistance will only exacerbate the public antagonism toward them, which is already running high because of the huge disparity between the state-subsidized pensions for public sector workers and the one for ordinary citizens.

The first thing the government workers’ unions should do is stop using physical force to thwart discussions on the reforms and instead prepare their own proposal on how to make their pension plan sustainable and reduce their reliance on state subsidies.

While the government workers’ unions’ militancy is a major stumbling block for the progress of the pension reform, the government has not been free from blunders either.

Ridiculously, the government is pressuring senior officials to sign a petition calling for the reform of the government workers’ pension. It has already collected signatures of all 29 vice minister-level officials, and plans to get more from ministers, senior officials and presidential staff.

No one would believe that the officials are signing the petition out of free will. This government is acting little differently from the past authoritarian ones that practiced top-down decision-making and mobilized officials for government-organized campaigns disguised as voluntary ones.