South Korea: Nearly 130,000 Workers Down Tools in KMWU National Strike, November 21, 2018.
Warning strike calls for Chaebol Reform, Fundamental Trade Union Rights in Labor Law and Against Flexibilization of Working Time
Today, 21 November 2018, some 128,277 members of the Korean Metal Workers’ Union at 109 workplaces joined the KCTU general strike calling for “Chaebol Reform” and for “Labor Law Reform” to guarantee internationally-recognized fundamental trade union rights. Though South Korea’s President Moon promised to create 500,000 new jobs by reducing working hours, instead the government is brokering legal amendments for a “flexible working time system” that would allow companies to make their employees work 80 hour weeks without overtime penalty rates. In protest of extending working hours through flexibilization of working time, the Seoul strike rally was held in front of the National Assembly in Youido.
Heeding the KMWU directive, auto workers at Hyundai Motors, Kia Motor, General Motors (GM), shipyard workers at Hyundai Heavy Industries, Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine, and auto parts workers at Hyundai Mobis and other major components workers went on strike for 4 hours or more. At workplaces where it was difficult to go on strike, shopstewards went on a union officers’ strike or locals called a general assembly of rank-and-file members in support of the struggle. After downing tools, the workers gathered at regional rallies throughout the country.
Participation in this strike exceeded that of the May 28th strike to protest retrogressive changes to the minimum wage act (80,000 members) and the July 13th KMWU strike (120,000 members) to push for victory to the 2018 wage and collective bargaining struggle. This is no small feat. At so many workplaces, wage and collective bargaining has already finished, but there was such a strong response from the membership owing to the government’s industrial policy deficit and slipshod jobs policy. Slapdash government policy to push duplicate and excessive investment in Gwangju with no consideration for current business considerations in the auto industry pushed workers to undertake strike. Not only does the scheme lack credibility, but it also stoked widespread concern that the central government and local governments were willing to make jobs under conditions violating current law.
GM Korea’s high-handed actions to pocket government subsidies then dishonor its commitments to the government and instead spin off part of the company into a separate corporate entity also forced the workers to undertake strike. Shipbuilding industry restructuring that pushed off all the responsibility of botched management onto the backs of workers also pushed workers to strike.
Government incompetence also played a role; the government not only failed to resolve problems of precarious jobs in the industrial sector, it also threw existing jobs into risk. In particular, outrage spread through workplaces like wildfire at the government and opposition party joining up to flexibilize working time. This national strike is the result of workers’ disappointment in, and plummeting confidence in the government.
This national strike is calling for dismantlement of the Chaebol-controlled economic regime in order to pave the way to true economic democratization and calling for labor law reform to guarantee all workers the 3 fundamental trade union rights: right to join a union in full freedom, right to collective bargaining and to collective action. Through this national strike, the Korean Metal Workers’ Union has confirmed the will of our union members, and based on these aspirations of our membership, we shall continue the struggle to make sweeping social reform. In particular, to stop the erosion of the Labor Standards Act for flexibilization of working time as pushed by the government and national assembly, the KMWU is planning diverse praxis together with the KCTU.
(photos of strike rallies in various regions and of workers walking off the job inside the factories in protest)
Via Korean Confederation of Trade Unions
South Korea
strike
metal workers
General Motors
workers
KCTU
class struggle
jobs
