South Korea: Ambiguous Labor Laws and Inconsistent Government

Ambiguous Labor Laws and Inconsistent Government

english.donga.com
JULY 21, 2007 03:03

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency arrested 168 E-Land union members who were staging a protest at New Core Department Store in Gangnam, and at the Homever outlet in Sangam-dong, at 9:40 a.m. July 20, one hour after it dispatched 7,000 policemen to the sites.

When police broke into the outlets, union members resisted arrest by folding their arms and lying on the floor, resulting in scuffles between police and the protesters. Lawmakers Kwon Yeong-gil, Roh Hoe-chan, Sim Sang-jeong, and Cheon Yeong-se from the progressive Democratic Labor Party who had been at the outlets since Thursday night strongly protested against the crackdown.

The police will prosecute all the protesters arrested for disrupting business operations. Meanwhile, members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions protested against the police crackdown at two Homever outlets in Ulsan and Siheung, which disrupted business temporarily. The KCTU decided to impose a boycott against E-Land products in response.

The aftereffects of the protest are expected to persist-

E-Land estimates that it suffered a loss of tens of billions of won because of the strikes which lasted for 21 days. An E-Land spokesman said, “The two outlets will resume business three to four days later after fixing the damaged facilities.”

Though most of the E-Land unionists, including leading members, were arrested, it is expected that management and labor will reach a compromise soon. Hong Yoon-gyeong, the new leader of the union, made it clear on the same day that the union would negotiate with the company.

Choi Seong-ho, PR director at E-Land, also said, “We will keep the promises we already made and continue to talk with the new leaders.” But the company would not withdraw an indemnity file against the union, though he said it would ask the police to show leniency to employees who participated in the strikes.

As the E-Land union plans to continue its protests by joining forces with the KTCU, the conflict between management and labor is likely to continue.

The Ministry of Labor announced, “With a third party taking part in the protests, the government cannot do anything else but deploy the police in order to prevent situations from spinning out of control.” However, the government is being blamed for worsening the situation by showing inconsistent responses to the strikes.

Initially, Labor Minister Lee Sang-su put pressure on the company, saying, “E-Land is hurriedly planning to outsource the hiring of non-regular workers,” and blamed the company for canceling contracts, which is not illegal. These stances invited criticism from business, which insists the ministry is taking sides with the union. As the strikes showed no signs of stopping, the government deployed police, provoking resistance from the union as well.”

At this, Park Jun-seong, a business management professor at Sungshin Women’s University, criticized the government, saying, “The government should have restrained the union from demanding too much while presenting unambiguous standards to establish a law aiming at protecting non-regular workers. The basic responsibility for this incident lies with the government, which failed to keep true to its laws and principles.”

The defect of the law protecting non-regular workers, which was introduced to legally transform non-regular workers into permanent workers, was also revealed through this incident.

Experts expect that filling the gap between the company and the union will not be easy since the former feels burdened with the law which provides non-regulars who do simple jobs with job security and the same salary as regular workers, while the latter demands not only job security but also the same treatment as regular workers.

Lee Hyo-su, a labor economics professor at Yeongnam University, pointed out, “It won’t be easy to revise the labor law, which was the result of an agreement between labor, management and the government. The fundamental solution is implementing a performance-based incentive system aimed at boosting labor cost flexibility, which will make up for the worsened employment flexibility stemming from making temporary workers permanent.”

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South Korea: Labour strife escalates as new labour law comes into effect
Jamie Doucette

On July 1st South Korea's new Law on Non-Regular Work came into effect. The principle of the law was to protect non-regular workers, but in practice the way in which it has been put together and implemented has led to protection only for a few and increased precariousness for many.

The law was a long time in the making, and the original plan was to involve all parties -- unions, business, and government -- in the drafting process of the bill. However, very early on the tripartite process broke down, with the progressive Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) pulling out of the process when it became clear that the law would only lead to the expansion of casual, contingent, contract and temporary forms of work.

The tripartite commission did not attempt attempt to assuage the worries of the KCTU but instead rushed through an agreement on the bill with the support of the more conservative Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU). The bill was passed amidst heated protest in the late fall of 2006 and came into effect on July 1st.

After the bill was passed, the government as well as some larger firms announced that they would be regularizing several thousands of employees that had been employed with non-regular contracts. However, in the lead up to the July 1st deadline, it was found that numerous private employers as well as the government itself had been laying off non-regular workers or forcing them to sign short term contracts (in some cases 'zero' work term contracts that would allow employees to be layed off on the spot if need be).

A recent article in Korea's left-liberal daily The Hankyoreh highlighted some of these abuses, reporting that recent union surveys (carried out by both the KCTU and FKTU) had found cases of lay-offs, re-assignment or other unfair hiring practices at firms across all sectors, from hospitals and postal delivery to banking and construction.

For example, the Hankyoreh reports that, "According to the FKTU, which conducted its own inspection by visiting 56 companies between July 4-22 [sic], the Korea Expressway Corporation is currently moving to outsource its 2,000 non-regular workers and Korea Post, Korea’s postal service, also plans to replace its 3,000 letter carriers, delivery people and postal workers with workers from temporary agencies. Both companies are state affiliates."

Other investigations by the Hankyoreh itself and other investigators have found similar practices at other firms.

It is no surprise that in the midst of these practices, labour strife has heated up as the new law has come into effect. The most prominent case in the media so far has been the case of retail workers at the Homever and New Core department stores owned by Korea's E-land group. There, mostly female cashiers have staged sit-ins that have drawn wide scale support protests and boycotts as well as attention from police who have sealed off E-Land's stores. Public support for the struggle and outcry over the E-Land's hiring practices intensified after civic groups were able to uncover that the company had forged documents to avoid regularizing employee's contracts. The government has since stepped in to mediate the strike but has yet done nothing to support the workers demands for regular status.

In addition to the strikes at E-Land and Homever, female workers from the KTX, Korea's high-speed rail system, began a hunger strike on July 2nd to protest their employer and the government's continued refusal to meet their demands for gender equality, safe working conditions, and job security. The KTX workers have been on strike since March 2006 and have also faced police action against them, even as the government's own National Human Rights Commission has stated that KORAIL must redress its 'gender discriminative employment structure.'

What is interesting about the latest round of strikes over non-regular work is that they have been largely undertaken by the female workforce that has been the target of both unfair practices and labour restructuring policies. This has led many in the grassroots Korean labour movement to hope that their activism can lead to a renaissance in female-led trade unionism -- women workers by and large led Korea's nascent democratic trade union movement in the late seventies with heroic strikes in textile and light manufacturing sectors. Korea is more well known for the image of militant blue collar unionists in heavy industries, but these unionists would probably not have made the gains they began to achieve in the late eighties and early nineties if were not for the groundwork and networks laid for them by the previous generation of female unionists and activists.

This time, however, whether or not the irregular workers movement and its strong female leadership expands and makes concrete social gains may depend on the solidarity extended to them from the large union confederations, who now carry significantly more power than they did decades ago. Support here needs to include not just lip service to the plight of irregular workers, but concrete changes to union structure that have been recommended by grassroots labour groups, such as stronger voting rights for irregular workers and a greater participatory role for them (as well as migrant workers) in policy formation.

Jamie Doucette, July 17, 2007