The history of Korean irregular workers' struggle and the tasks before the movement

Issue No. 58 January - March 2006

The struggles mounted by irregular Korean workers are inextricably linked to the overall democratic labour movement’s fight against restructuring. A history suffused with tears and agony, at the same time, the struggles are also a narrative of how contingent workers in struggle have broadened the boundaries of the democratic workers’ movement and become new subjects in the movement to fight labour flexibilisation.

1. How did insecure work become so widespread?

In the wake of a wave of neo-liberalism that swept Korea in the 1980s, capital has manoeuvred to trample fundamental labour rights, demolish the wage and welfare system, and gain the ‘freedom’ to fire at will. Backed by the coercive power of the state, capital fulfilled its goal of labour flexibilisation. In part, capital’s drive to introduce flexibilisation was motivated by the need to counter the growing strength of organised labour since the Great Workers’ Struggle, a three-month long outburst of rank-and-file-led strikes that spread like wildfire in 1987. Capital employed women workers in the budding private services sector, undervalued the labour value, and sought to institutionalise both low wages and precarious employment. With the 1980s construction boom, the number of day-labourers grew rapidly and with multi-tiered subcontracting separating the employers from the employed, a new subclass of low-wage day labourers emerged.

Thus, between the late-1980s and the early- to mid-1990s, irregular workers were concentrated in specific industries and the problem of insecure work was perceived not so much as an issue for the entire movement, but as the problem of a particular sector.

‘New Managerial Strategy’: attempts at flexibilisation

In the mid-1990s, capital launched its neo-liberal policy initiative under the name ‘New Managerial Strategy.’ Its substance was to marginalise labour unions by transforming the internal workplace culture and restructuring to externalise employment responsibilities using strategies like subcontracting and outsourcing. Invoking the imperatives of lean production, capital incessantly told workers of the ‘need’ to shed peripheral (non-core) functions.

The minju nojo movement (autonomous and democratic union movement) understood this ‘New Managerial Strategy’ as an attempt to undercut unions; yet, the union counteroffensive took place on a somewhat fragmented workplace by workplace basis through shop floor-based struggle. Meanwhile, capital was spearheading, not only efforts to usher in neo-liberalism at the workplace, but also a broader attack aimed at institutionalising labour flexibilisation through far-reaching legislative ‘reform’, and more concretely by commandeering the Presidential Commission for Industrial Relations Reform (PCIRR). In 1993, capital attempted to lift restrictions on labour dispatch (temporary agency work) and promoted bills to enlarge the sphere of irregular employment. The agenda of these legislative ‘reforms’ was to create a legal apparatus to reinforce the restructuring strategies already underway at workplace-level: subcontracting and outsourcing, the basis for casualising labour.

All-out neo-liberal assault and the amplification of insecure work

The years 1996 and 1997 marked the point when the neo-liberal assault went full-scale. The government regime under president Kim Young-sam tried to institutionalise mass redundancies and a labour dispatch system by railroading the enactment of retrogressive labour laws. The democratic labour movement organised a nationwide general strike in resistance; however, it failed to stop the onslaught. An economic crisis struck on the heels of this failure. With the nation in the grip of crisis mentality, neo-liberalism spread even faster.

Unrestrained labour casualisation began. No longer confined to a particular labour segment, casualisation began to hit manufacturing and white collar work. Capital enacted redundancies at a few union strongholds to symbolise its power, but the main thrust of irregularisation and redundancies occurred at non-union and small workplaces. Thus, Korea stepped into out-and-out neo-liberalism.

Institutionalisation, generalisation, and hierarchisa-tion of irregular work

In early 2004, we saw attempts to make insecure work the norm. Institutions to generalise irregular work throughout all sectors included establishing new categories, e.g. ‘special employment’, to make workers ‘pseudo-workers’1 and expanding application of the dispatch labour law2 to more industries. If this trend continues, permanent, regular workers will be those who are ‘special’ or rare. Another push has been to hierarchise the irregular workforce into different tiers to throw workers on lower levels into fierce competition with one another. Low wages and poor work conditions for those on the bottom tier becomes ‘normal’; hierarchisation spawns discrimination among workers and erodes worker unity.

If discrimination in wages and work conditions are rationalised, workers in the bottom tiers will become ‘socially weak’, objects of charity, while the number of workers for whom the minimum wage is the maximum wage will increase. Pauperisation of all workers will accelerate, and women workers and older workers will fall to the lower end of the hierarchy. Thus capital fosters division and competition to exercise control over workers.

2. Irregular workers’ movement struggle history

The irregular workers’ struggle falls into three different categories of struggle. a) Irregular workers’ struggle toform unions and fight for employment security and rights: workers have undertaken such struggle since 2000, and nowadays, there is widespread recognition of irregular workers’ issues. b) the struggle to stem the spread of irregular work and stop institutionalisation of irregular work, making insecure work a social issue to win basic labour rights. To date irregular workers have championed this struggle. c) the struggle to foster greater consciousness about insecure work among regular workers, fighting to regularise casual workers or ending discrimination against irregular workers. These three dimensions of movement combine in myriad ways to develop the struggle.

1999, irregular workers launch struggles: in-house subcontracting at Halla Heavy Industries, Jaeneung Education Tutors’ Labor Union (JETU)

The 1999 struggles of Halla Heavy Industries subcontracting workers and tutors of the Jaeneung Education Corporation are crucial, marking the beginnings of the explosive irregular workers’ struggles of today. The Halla Heavy Industries irregular workers’ case showed how closely tied irregular workers’ issues were to the issue of restructuring, at the same time showing that the interests of irregular and regular workers had drifted apart. The tutors of Jaeneung Education Corporation—whose struggle has become synonymous with the struggle of ‘special employment’ workers—founded their union in 1999. When the tutors formed the Jaeneung Education Tutors’ Labor Union (JETU), awareness of ‘special employment’ was low. Problems relating to ‘commissioned contracts’ could not help but emerge and were part of the JETU struggle slogans and demands. The JETU struggle established ‘special employment’ workers as an important part of the overall Korean irregular workers’ struggle, and highlighted ‘special employment’ as a basis for consciousness-raising in 1999.

2000, explosive struggles meet some success

Irregular workers’ struggles burst fully onto the scene in 2000. The economic crisis had subsided somewhat leaving regular workers with greatly diminished wages and worse working conditions, but the irregular workers’ situation deteriorated daily. With burgeoning accumulated grievances, irregular workers undertook struggle to gain industrial civil rights; the form of their struggle was largely a wave of fights to establish unions. Their struggles found a measure of success.

In 2000 the labour movement also made greater efforts to make irregular workers’ problems a social issue. Some 20 labour and social movement organisations formed the Joint Countermeasures Committee to Abolish Labor Dispatch to expose the problems rife in indirect employment caused by the Labour Dispatch Act and to support irregular workers’ struggles, while civic groups formed the Joint Countermeasures Committee for Irregular Workers’ Basic Rights to lobby for an amendment to the law. Thus, the issue was spotlit and many groups worked to expose the problems of irregular work. In the end, however, the struggles that erupted mainly relied on the subjects themselves; one limitation was that many tended to see the issue narrowly as the plight of irregular workers. Nevertheless, it was an important success that irregular workers’ problems were well publicised.

2001, Irregular Workers’ Struggle Front: Korea Telecom Contract Workers’ Union, Korean Ready-Mixed-Concrete (Remicon) Mixer Truck Drivers’ Union, Carrier In-House Subcontracting Workers’ Union

When irregular workers’ struggles coalesced and their deplorable situation became well known in 2000, capital began extending the institutionalisation of irregular work and laying the foundations for legislation on irregular work. This became concrete in October 2000, when the Ministry of Labour announced the Measures to Protect Atypical Workers. In order to gain the upper hand in promoting retrogressive amendments to laws relating to irregular workers, capital did not budge an inch and maintained complete intransigence in the irregular workers’ struggles. It became apparent that a fight out against capital was in the offing. Three struggles emerged: the union of Korea Telecom fixed-term contract workers undertook a struggle against restructuring and redundancy dismissal; the nationwide union of Remicon (ready-mixed-concrete) mixer truck drivers fought to achieve ‘worker’ recognition for ‘special employment’ workers and; the union of in-house subcontracted production workers at Carrier Corporation (air-conditioner makers) fought a struggle to build solidarity between the regular workers’ and irregular workers’ unions at the same workplace. They were all critical struggles in that a victory or defeat would have great impact on the wider political situation and decide who would emerge with the initiative to shape the future.

Although the subjects of the struggles were prepared and resolute, the labour movement as a whole was unable to adopt those struggles as tasks of the entire movement, and thus, the actors were left to fight the struggles individually. The struggles ended in defeat, and the movement experienced growth of ‘special employment’, deprivation of basic labour rights, divisions over restructuring between regular and irregular workers, and the spread of indirect employment. The struggles undertaken by irregular workers in this period were painfully difficult. Although it could be said that undergoing this crucible strengthened irregular workers’ consciousness as the subjects and prime agency behind the struggle, it could also be said that the democratic labour movement had reached its own limitations in fighting the institutions that mass-produced irregular work and in understanding the society-wide implications of irregular work.

2002, slump and the growth of consciousness about basic labour rights

A sense of failure and powerlessness lingered after the failure of these three representative irregular workers’ struggles of 2001. However, this could not extinguish irregular workers’ struggles. Facing a lifetime of being easily pushed from workplace to workplace, irregular workers were forced to rise to the occasion when push came to shove and struggle anew. However, the struggles of 2002 could not help being less energetic. Although the subjects of struggle were facing difficulty, this did not mean that irregular workers’ struggle would disappear. As irregular workers’ problems about basic labour rights spread, they initiated a demand for a joint struggle. By now, the democratic labour camp had also grown acutely aware that the irregular work issue was not someone else’s problem, but their own. ‘Special employment’ workers, though facing difficulty within their own workplaces, nevertheless began looking beyond the day-to-day problems at the enterprise-level to deepen anew their consciousness of basic labour rights. Fora to discuss countermeasures and strategy on ‘special employment’ and another for indirect employment were organised. Permanent, regular workers’ unions also began to prepare and conscientise regular workers to struggle alongside irregular workers. Thus, at shop floor level, in collective bargaining with employers, regular workers’ unions began forwarding demands for new clauses to ‘eliminate discrimination against irregular workers’ and clauses to ‘regularise’ irregular workers at their workplaces. At the Kia Motors Kwangju plant, the union successfully won a clause to convert irregular workers to regular worker status; similar precedents were set little by little. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) regarded irregular work as one if its core problems, trained organised activists and gradually drafted plans to organise irregular workers in a goal-oriented way.

2003, formation of new subjects, potential struggles, in-house contracting workers form unions, and the truckers’ solidarity struggle

After popular awareness spread on the irregular work issue and through countless efforts to organise irregular workers, some larger-scale and significant irregular worker labour unions were formed in 2003. In-house subcontracting workers at Hyundai Motors formed a union for irregular workers centred in the Asan and Ulsan plants, and ‘special employment’ truck drivers joined forces to stage a powerful strike. Additionally, the Korea Labor Welfare Corporation Irregular Workers’ Union, galvanised by the protest via self-immolation and death of an irregular worker activist, went on strike and won. These struggles were the product of goal-oriented organising efforts. While the perception that these were struggles to address only irregular workers’ problems still remained, when these powerful struggles began, capital no longer thought that it could simply crush the irregular workers’ union whole as in the past. However, although capital made some concessions, even in laws and institutions, it continued to focus on maintaining a system to churn out irregular work from regular work and oppress workers’ basic rights.

Struggles for basic labour rights and living rights

It was not until 2004 that people realised that the core of the irregular work issue as not only about the plight of those who were irregular workers, but instead as the task of a united labour movement to win basic labour rights. Thus, it was possible for irregular worker unions throughout the country to build the Korea Solidarity Conference of Irregular Workers’ Union Leaders (Solidarity Conference). Through the Solidarity Conference, irregular workers established their joint task to organise a Struggle for the Achievement of Basic Labour Rights; now they organise to marshal the collective strength of irregular workers’ unions nationwide.

They also organised struggles with social and political dimensions. In the past, the struggle to raise the minimum wage was relegated to workers receiving the minimum wage; however, the Solidarity Conference broadened this into a general struggle against growing impoverishment and won popular support. Further, they organised a Joint Action Against Insecure Work and Poverty. In doing so, the irregular workers’ movement no longer relied solely on the ranks of labour, but rather, began organising to demand the interests of all insecure workers. Thus, by 2004 irregular workers’ struggles had developed beyond trade unions into larger social struggles.

3. Limitations of the irregular workers’ movement

A limitation of the irregular workers’ movement was that it was largely confined to building an irregular workers’ union struggling for legal recognition. However, irregular workers must counter a larger, aggregate, extensive, and institutional attack from both capital and state. This struggle begins with a fight against one capitalist’s denial of any responsibility or employment relation, and it necessarily implies broader social and political issues. Even if a union achieves conversion of members’ employment status to permanent, regular workers, irregular work is still mass-produced institutionally; thus, the irregular workers’ struggle itself carries strong social importance. Nevertheless, the problem of insecure work has largely been confined to forming a trade union, and even among unions, the specific form of the irregular workers’ union; this is one limitation of the movement today.

Failure to organise on a mass basis

While irregular workers’ struggles are significant in that they contribute to forming a sense of agency, of being the subject for struggle, and to building mass-based trade unions, it has been difficult if not nearly impossible to spread this sense of agency and subjecthood to all union members, instead it is confined to activists within the new union. Thus, struggles are increasingly confined to a core of activists within a union determined to defend the union to the end. However, when a mass-based organisation like a union loses the ability to act like a mass-based organisation with strong participation from grassroots members, it loses much of its significance. Further, without maximising its strength—the unity of its members—the union has few tools to fight capital. This has been the objective reality of irregular workers in particular, so some of their unions have jettisoned the hope of broadening their struggle into a truly mass-based one, and instead used a strategy of the ‘leading struggle’ hoping that prefigurative struggles can pave the way or play an intermediating role toward creating something larger. Also capital is stubbornly intransigent on even the smallest demand, so struggles tend to develop militancy. Since the power dynamics were imbalanced at the beginning, when workers have a small win, they tend to end the struggle, negatively effecting further organisation.

Our struggles did not advance into struggles against root problems

Facing the possibility that irregular workers become hardened by harsh oppression and expose the problems rife in neo-liberalism publicly, the government proffered its hidden card, ‘trade union stabilisation’, in return for acceptance of irregular work as a normal form of employment. That is, after continuous oppression and refusal to recognise the union, the government offered to improve working conditions so long as workers recognise irregular work as a valid form of employment. If irregular workers’ unions accept this, they could become complicit in sustaining and enlarging the scope of irregular work.

Over-expectations of institutional reform: Understanding the costs of inaugurating lasting institutional change 
One problem is that many do not understand the basic character of the government’s flexbilisation offensive, and thus are liable to mistakenly calculate that if we revise our demands to win some reform, then we can somehow further the cause of basic labour rights. Capital claims that labour flexibilisation is an irresistible tide of the times, and has already argued that instead of resisting the move toward irregular work that we should accept it if its worst excesses are moderated by government measures. If we accept—even partially—such a proposition with the intention of furthering some kind of lasting change, we undermine our position for long-term resistance to the spread of irregular work. Instead, we would acknowledge the mass production of irregular workers and continued erosion of regular work. Our demand is clear: all workers must have basic labour rights, and as a movement, we will not accept irregular work (though individuals may turn to irregular work to sustain their needs). When the stakes that shape the terrain for future struggle are high, we must know how to stand our ground and endure. If the situation is NOT one where we can reasonably reach some middle ground through compromise, we should choose endurance, even though we know we will be broken in the process. We must steel ourselves to go through that if we are really to create a credible movement that has a future and a struggle that can turn the tide of encroaching casualisation of work.

4. Tasks before the movement

Here are some thoughts on the political and social tasks before us that are necessary for impelling the irregular workers’ movement forward beyond being confined to a trade union movement.

Organising irregular workers must go beyond enterprise level workplace

The field of struggle for the irregular workers’ movement must go beyond the factory, office, or individual workplace and into the institutional and political arena. Up to now, one stumbling block before all irregular workers’ unions in struggle has been institutional constraints. Since institutional constraints affect everyone, it is very important for irregular workers’ unions to share their strategies and thinking. The Solidarity Conference must rise to the challenge of addressing social and political issues, and speaking out on those issues instead of remaining content with assisting individual unions in struggle. This includes the struggle to gain basic labour rights, the struggle to demand secure jobs, the struggle to win the four basic forms of social insurances (unemployment insurance, health insurance, industrial accident insurance, and retirement pension), the struggle against deepening impoverishment and for raising the minimum wage, and demanding social rights such as the right to good health and the right to education.

Subjects of struggle: beyond a struggle of irregular workers to a struggle of the whole democratic union movement

Countering the growth of irregular work is the task for the entire democratic union movement, not just the struggle of irregular workers. If we don’t block the casualisation strategy of capital with our combined strength, irregular work will become a huge problem for all workers. Recently, capital has changed its divide-and-conquer (irregular from regular) control tactic into a more aggressive one where capital has taken irregular workers hostage in order to exert pressure on regular workers. In doing so, capital has distorted the democratic union movement as being simply about representing regular workers. In order to combat this new attack, the democratic labour camp must, together with irregular workers, fight the state and capital on the current issues of the day—restructuring, neo-liberalism, and within that, the institutions reproducing and expanding the realm of irregular work.

Popular organising of irregular workers must go beyond organising unions

Vast numbers of workers in Korean society suffer from irregular work. Realistically, it will be difficult for all of these workers to form trade unions. However, for a long time now, we have thought of building agency and empowering subjects of struggle as organising into unions and taking it from there. The problem of deepening impoverishment, the minimum wage, and receiving the basic forms of social insurance are not necessarily the urgent and pressing issues for irregular workers’ unions. Thus, it is important for irregular workers’ unions to go to the masses of unorganised irregular workers who ARE facing those issues as immediate problems and build mutual empathy, and facilitate the unorganised to speak out without claiming to represent the unorganised. We must not only build such dialogue among irregular workers but also do some space-clearing so that unorganised irregular workers can join the struggle in myriad spaces and speak in the absence of having established a trade union.

Undertaking struggle with the vision to build a better society

At heart, the basic character of the irregular workers’ struggle is to resist and challenge neo-liberalism which compels the flexibilisation of labour. A counter struggle against the neo-liberal assault is not in the realm of the economic, but rather, the political. When the irregular workers’ movement transforms into an openly political struggle of the masses, we can win. We can go beyond a reactive, defensive struggle against neo-liberalism and instead struggle to establish human dignity and the value of community, no longer a fight to just defend ourselves but a fight to live fully, and we must fight and struggle and organise to voice in public our vision for a new paradigm beyond only stemming the onslaught of neo-liberalism.

Irregular workers’ unions and the irregular workers’ movement are exactly the subjects of struggle at the forefront of this fight. The struggle to get to the place where we can voice our political demands would be the clearest opposition to neo-liberalism, a system that plunges workers and the dispossessed into ever deepening impoverishment and makes employment insecure. All workers have the right to work in health and security. We must challenge the neo-liberal system that makes work dangerous, the work environment a cause of injury, and the pace of work mind-numbingly fast. Everyone must strive to create a work environment of freedom, health and dignity no matter whether one is a regular worker or an irregular worker. These are not rights that can be won through a minority’s struggle on behalf of the majority nor are these rights a kind of alms that can be handed down to us; rather, we assert and take these rights through our struggle. It is essential to have a qualitatively new social reorganisation programme to realise and achieve the ‘politics of rights.’

Notes

1 The Korean government coined the term ‘special employment’ to release employers from enforcing key worker protections. It means that workers are not directly employed, but re-classified as ‘freelancing independent contractors,’ with no legally recognised employment relationship, similar to the Independent Contractor in the US. 
2 The law passed on 20 February 1998 is the ‘Act Relating to Protection etc. for Dispatched Workers’. The law’s stated objective: to enhance the flexibility of supply and demand of manpower despite its claim to protect dispatched workers. Dispatched labour means workers whose employment contract is with an agency, so management where s/he works can shirk responsibility for wages and conditions.