The Contested Politics of Gender and Irregular Employment: the Revitalizion of the South Korean...

The reconfiguration of capitalist employment relations is a centralfeature of work in today’s global economy. In place of regular, full-time employment under a single employer, a growing proportion ofworkers can be found in ‘irregular’ (bijunggyujik) forms of employ-ment – that is, employment defined by structural ambiguity overwhat a ‘worker’ and an ‘employer’ is.1 Nowhere is this moreapparent than in South Korea, where irregular employment nowrepresents the dominant form of employment, with more than 70per cent of women between 1993 and 2003 employed as part-timeworkers, workers hired by temporary agencies (pagyun), workershired under subcontracting companies, independent contractors, on-call workers, and day labourers among others. While insecure formsof irregular employment have been and continue to be a dominantpattern of employment for traditionally disadvantaged sectors of theworkforce under historical capitalism, it is only since the so-called‘IMF crisis’ in 1997–98 and the subsequent passage of flexiblelabour law revisions in South Korea that irregular employment hasbecome synonymous with a systematic assault on labour. Today, theimposition of flexible forms of irregular employment is viewed as akey mechanism to downgrade wages and labour rights protection aswell as break the power of militant trade unions.

To challenge the erosion of their living and working conditionsin the post-IMF period, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions(KCTU), the national centre of the democratic labour movement,has identified the ‘abolition of irregular employment’ (bijonggyuchulpye) as one of its major organizational priorities. Since the year2000, the KCTU has waged mass rallies, petition campaigns, hungerstrikes and joint solidarity actions with the more politicallymoderate, historically government-linked Federation of Korean

Chapter 2

The contested politics of gender andirregular employment: revitalizing the South Korean democratic labour movementJennifer Jihye Chun

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Trade Unions (FKTU) to condemn the assault on their wages andlivelihoods under the guise of ‘flexibility’. Despite these efforts,however, the KCTU-led labour movement’s capacity to challenge theexpansion of irregular employment and the repressive, cost-cuttingpractices associated with it is hampered by two key obstacles. First,the vast majority of KCTU affiliates represent male workersemployed under regular, full-time employment in large enterprises,which is less than one-quarter of the entire workforce. Its narrowingconstituency base has not only heightened tensions between KCTU’sregularly employed union members and the irregularly employedworkers who are perceived to ‘threaten’ their job security and wagestandards, it has also plagued its ability to genuinely represent theworkforce at large, especially the rapidly growing periphery ofworkers in lower-paid, more insecure and socially marginal forms ofemployment. Second, while its staunch opposition to authoritariandevelopmental state regimes in the past was a key feature in securingde facto labour rights and improving living and working conditions,the KCTU has been largely unable to expand democratic rights forworkers in the post-authoritarian period. Ironically, since the instal-lation of democratic state regimes in the 1990s, workers and tradeunions face a rollback on formal labour rights and protections. Thisis largely a result, I argue, of the KCTU’s inability to adapt its strate-gies and tactics to the anti-unionism of a new political regime – theneoliberal democratic state regime.

This paper reflects upon the challenges facing the South Koreandemocratic labour movement by investigating the shifting lines ofinclusion and exclusion for labour under processes of globalization.In the first section I examine how ‘the infiltration of market-driventruths and calculations into the domain of politics’, or what AihwaOng (2005) calls ‘neoliberal governmentality’, is disciplining mili-tant forms of unionism in both the workplace and the larger society.Whereas the mass mobilization of independent trade unions effec-tively undermined the legitimacy of repressive state regimes andemployers under authoritarian industrialization, neoliberal demo-cratic regimes in today’s globalized economy are appealing to thelogic of market competition and managerial authority to criminalizeunion militancy and weaken existing labour protections.

In the second section, I examine the deepening fault linesdividing the workforce on the criteria of employment status andgender. As more and more workers face the erosion of basic labourrights and meaningful forms of workplace leverage, unions areconfronted with the need to adapt their strategies and priorities in

24 LABOUR AND THE CHALLENGES OF GLOBALIZATION

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line with the changing world of work. Although many scholars seesuch changes as the source of heightened fragmentation within thelabour movement, in the third section I demonstrate how frictionsalong employment status and gender play a major role in developingnew organizations and strategies that can organize the growingranks of workers in the periphery, highlighting the contradictoryand contingent dynamics of historical capitalism.

NEOLIBERAL DEMOCRATIC REGIMES: BREAKING MILITANT UNIONISM

Democratic trade unionism was exploding in South Korea by thelate 1980s. Union membership levels skyrocketed, increasing fromapproximately 1 million to 1.9 million between 1987 and 1989.Real wage levels also rose, increasing by from 7.8 per cent in 1988to 14.5 per cent in 1989. The state’s foray into heavy manufacturingand its growing centrality in the national economy gave workers andunions the leverage they needed to undermine nearly three decadesof state labour repression under export-oriented industrialization.Independent unions, which were imbued with a widespread sense ofmoral and political legitimacy, began dismantling government-controlled company unionism and establishing genuinerepresentational organizations for workers. The militant democraticlabour movement was poised to take full advantage of theirnewfound potential, expanding the scope of labour’s influence intothe governing structures of society. However, intensified pressuresfor South Korea to liberalize its markets and adopt the prescriptionsof neoliberal globalization intervened in this historical moment ofpossibility. Instead, militant democratic unions faced renewedattempts by newly democratic state regimes to undermine their legit-imacy and reconfigure relations of power in line with the interests ofa more aggressive and cost-cutting capital.

Although the assault on workers and trade unions is commonlyhighlighted to emphasize the downward pressures of globalizedcompetition and capital mobility, it is crucial to provide historical andgeographic specificity to this claim. In South Korea, the enhancedmobility of capital coupled with flexible economic restructuring poli-cies certainly weakened the basis of power for trade unions, especiallyin the case of labour-intensive manufacturing sectors, where plantclosings and capital flight resulted in the failure of 80 per cent oftrade unions in small and medium plants by 1990.2 However, in morecapital-intensive sectors where production was flourishing, theoutright relocation of production to ‘union-free’ worksites was a

SOUTH KOREA 25


much less feasible strategy. Beginning in 1989, chaebols (largeconglomerates) in auto, steel, shipbuilding, electronics and public util-ities started to dominate the national economy, contributing over 60per cent of total domestic sales and two-thirds of total exports. Ratherthan jeopardize production in strategic sectors, large companies begangranting union concessions in exchange for labour peace. Annualwage growth rates in firm-level collective bargaining agreementsjumped from 6.8 per cent in 1986 to 17.5 per cent in 1989 (see Table2 in Jeong, 2005: 44). Unions also secured stronger guarantees for life-time employment, seniority-based promotions and welfare benefits,especially in chaebol enterprises that received financial assistance,support for technological development and protection from foreigncompetitors from the South Korean government.

To counter the increasing power of unions in large enterprises,employers went on the offensive. One of the biggest problems thatemployers had to contend with after 1987 was the transformed legalinstitutional climate regulating employer-employee relations. Before1987, employers could count on coercive state intervention to inter-vene in labour disputes and strip workers of their de jure collectivelabour rights. However, Hagen Koo explains that during the ‘Greatworkers’ struggle’ of 1987 and 1988, ‘the state withdrew itself forthe first time from the industrial arena and proclaimed a natural andhands-off policy toward labour relations’. Forced to deal with thestrength of militant unionists head on, ‘the capitalists began to takeon that responsibility for themselves’ (Koo, 2000: 235). In additionto aggressive strategies to reorganize wage payment schemes andautomate production processes according to flexible managerialtechniques, employers began advocating policy changes in existinglabour law frameworks.3 Although authoritarian state regimes in thepast used the legal arena to suppress independent trade unionactivity, ‘the laws were quite restrictive and protective of labour withregard to the issues of redundancy and layoffs’. Employers could notlegally fire workers without cause, nor could they unilaterally down-grade wages and benefits to cut labour costs. To justify theirdemands for weakened labour rights, employers appealed to theincreasingly hegemonic global discourse of ‘flexibility’. They empha-sized that the elimination of rigid rules and regulations in internalfirm labour markets, especially in core sectors of the economy, wasnecessary for businesses to respond flexibly to the vicissitudes of ahighly competitive global economy.

The burgeoning labour movement was somewhat successful inpreventing employer-driven attacks, most notably the 1993 proposal



for legalization of temporary agency work (pagyun), which reflectedan authoritarian labour practice that was banned after 1987.Surprisingly, it was not until the installation of the first two civilianpresidents in South Korea, both of whom had been well-knownactivists in the national struggle for democracy during the authori-tarian period, that capital was able to institutionalize its demandsfor a weakened regulatory climate for labour. The first electedcivilian president, Kim Young Sam, promoted the sweeping transfor-mation of major institutions, from education to publicadministration to cultural attitudes, under the banner of segyehwa(translated as globalization). Segyehwa was aimed at dismantlingthe legacies of authoritarian dictatorships and catapulting SouthKorea into ‘an advanced country active on the centre stage of worldaffairs in the 21st century’. South Korea’s entry into the Organisa-tion for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) was akey component of Kim’s nationalist ambitions, and his administra-tion established a Presidential Commission on Labour-ManagementRelations Reform to facilitate the process. From the standpoint oforganized labour, the debates surrounding South Korea’s entry intothe OECD looked promising for abolishing repressive labour lawslinked with authoritarian dictatorships. However, ‘as the Commis-sion’s deliberations proceeded … it was the voice of capital and theimperatives of global competition that increasingly held sway’ (Koo,2000: 238). Despite Kim Young Sam’s promise to create a ‘newindustrial relations plan’ in line with the protective labour standardsof the International Labour Organization (ILO), he attempted topass eleven new laws to weaken existing wage and employmentprotections during a secretly convened session of the NationalAssembly in December 1996.

The democratic labour movement responded by launching thefirst nationwide General Strike against the implementation of flex-ible labour law reforms.4 Although the mass mobilization of bothKCTU and FKTU unionists garnered unprecedented internationalsolidarity, the consolidation of a neoliberal democratic regime underthe next presidential administration further institutionalized theassault on workers and their collective organizations. In the contextof a national emergency under the ‘IMF crisis’, President Kim DaeJung passed two of the most significant laws that resulted in theerosion of labour rights once guaranteed under national labour lawframeworks. Article 31 of the Labour Standards Act, ‘Dismissals formanagerial reasons’, gave employers the right to lay off workersduring periods of economic necessity, and the ‘Temporary Agency

SOUTH KOREA 27


Law’ allowed companies to hire temporary workers to reducelabour costs and strengthen firm competitiveness. Loan conditional-ities attached to the US$57 million that the IMF lent to the SouthKorean government created the ideal conditions to implementneoliberal structural adjustment policies; however, ‘the IMF had anenthusiastic partner in President-elect Kim Dae Jung who assertedthat the full liberalization of South Korea’s economy and society wasboth necessary and inevitable for resolving the national crisis andsecuring its future prosperity’ (Crotty and Lee, 2005: 4).

The aftermath of the so-called IMF crisis signalled the full-scaleimplementation of neoliberal governance in all aspects of employ-ment. Union consent was no longer required in managerial decisionssuch as hiring and firing and outsourcing. The passage of the MassDismissal Law also gave employers the green light to engage in arbi-trary dismissals under the guise of ‘necessary business restructuring’.The government was a major force behind mandatory lay-offs,ordering businesses to implement 30 per cent workforce reductions,regardless of the firm’s economic condition. The state also crackeddown on unionists who vehemently opposed mass dismissals, priva-tization and other components of the state’s neoliberal restructuringprogramme. Militant labour struggles in sectors undergoingeconomic restructuring (chaebol-dominated heavy industries, state-controlled financial, banking and public utilities) were broken up byviolent state intervention, including the use of riot police, teargastrucks, water cannons and helicopters to break up the HyundaiMotor Union’s strike and the Mando Machinery union strike in1998, both of which represented some of the first strike actions byprotesting unionists against legalized mass dismissals in 1998.

In response to the climate of intensified employer abuse, theKCTU has attempted to re-escalate militant opposition to the dereg-ulation of the labour market. However, the shift from authoritariandevelopmental regimes to neoliberal democratic regimes has signifi-cantly hampered the traditional source of worker power for theKorean democratic labour movement. Whereas militant unionismonce exposed the contradiction between state repression and formaldemocracy, it is now considered a threat to national security andprosperity. Thus, even when democratic administrations invokesimilar authoritarian labour practices to suppress militant unionism,such as violent police action against striking unionists, union mili-tancy no longer exposes a contradiction between de jure and defacto state practices. Union compliance with flexible labour prac-tices is viewed as a critical component of the nation’s broader



project of economic reform and recovery, especially in the context ofthe new regulatory climate for labour, which has legalized weakenedlabour rights protection.

The KCTU’s repeated calls for international solidarity againstincreased police violence and government repression against strikingunionists highlight the consequences of this new political climate forthe democratic labour movement.5 Almost every militant strikeaction by KCTU unionists has elicited police intervention by thestate. Striking unionists also face severe punitive consequences suchas imprisonment and onerous civil suits filed by employers for lossof profits and the provisional seize of property during strikeactions.6 A telling example of the hostile ideological climateplaguing militant unionists is captured by a quote from the mayorof Pohang the day the Pohang Regional Construction Union endedan 82-day strike against the POSCO corporation. In a ‘letter toPohang citizens’, Mayor Park Seung-ho stated, ‘The city of Pohangwas dealt a crippling blow by the unprecedented strike that hasdrawn international attention [to] the headquarters of POSCO,which is the backbone industry of Korea. Let’s join hands to get ridof [the] stigma as a strike-stricken city and to reinvent the city as abusiness-friendly place’ (Donga Ilbo newspaper, 2006).

LABOUR MARKET RESEGMENTATION: GENDER AND THEEXPANSION OF IRREGULAR EMPLOYMENT

In addition to the intensified state of police repression under neolib-eral democratic regimes, the KCTU-led democratic labourmovement faces another major obstacle in the post-IMF era. Likeworkers across the world, Korean workers confront the resegmenta-tion of labour markets in conjunction with neoliberal labourflexibility. Based on 2005 figures from the National Statistics Office,we see two major fault lines dividing core and peripheral workers byemployment status and gender (see Figure 2.1). The core zone repre-sents 34 per cent of the total workforce employed in regular,full-time employment workers, and male workers constitute 69 percent of this total workforce. The peripheral zones represent 58 percent of the total workforce employed in more unstable forms ofirregular employment that are often outside the purview of basicrights and protections afforded to regularly employed workers.Female workers represent a higher proportion in both the firstperipheral zone of temporary and daily workers (53 per cent) andthe second peripheral zone of self-employed and unpaid familyworkers (47 per cent). While the unemployed population represents

SOUTH KOREA 29


a small proportion of the periphery, its relatively small size is attrib-uted to the proliferation of workers in peripheral zones of irregularemployment, as opposed to new jobs in the core.

Sharpened divisions along employment status and gender arereflected in the shifting boundaries of union membership. Not onlydid union membership drop to a historic low of 10.3 per cent in2005, union membership represents a shrinking segment of theworkforce at large: regular workers employed in the core zone ofrelatively privileged and protected employment (see Figure 2.2). Ifwe look at union density in large enterprises (more than 299employees), whose employees form the majority of the KCTU’smembership, union membership increased from 60 per cent in 1989


Figure 2.1 Resegmentation of the Korean labour market 7

Core34% regular (7.9 million)

69% male

Unpaid family and self-employed6 million*

47% female**

Unemployed887,000

Temporary and daily 7.3 million (53% women)

Periphery58% irregular (13.3 million)

50.1% female

Ecoomically active population: 22.85 million Source; National Statistics Office, Republic of Korea, 2005 figures* Self-employed does not include employer category.** Gender ratio does not take into account the distinction between more

conventional understandings of self-employment and informal work, which represent a predominantly female population.


to an all-time high of 70.9 per cent in 2000. In contrast, uniondensity in small enterprises (with less than 100 employees) decreasedfrom 9.5 per cent in 1989 to 1.1 per cent in 2000. These figuresreveal more stark disparities when we consider the role of large andsmall enterprises in the labour market. In 2000, small enterpriseshired 78.3 per cent of the workforce, in comparison with largeenterprises which hired just 8.7 per cent. The increased unionizationof workers in large enterprises has also taken place alongside themarked decline of stable, secure, full-time employment, which repli-cates the narrowing pattern of union membership. Of all wage andsalary workers between 1989 and 2002, the proportion of regularlyemployed workers decreased from 54.76 per cent to 48.39 per cent,while the proportion of irregularly employed workers (temporaryand daily workers) increased from 45.24 per cent to 34.45 per cent(see Figure 2.3).8

A closer look at the shifting gender composition of unionmembership over the past two decades highlights the significanceof gender as another salient organizing principle of inclusion andexclusion for the labour movement. Unions overwhelmingly repre-sent male workers, which has left female workers vulnerable tounfavourable wage bargains and insecure employment. In 1980,the height of female union membership, 347,751 women (36.68per cent) belonged to unions while 600,383 men (63.32 per cent)belonged to unions. In 2003, this gap increased considerably, with

SOUTH KOREA 31

Figure 2.2 Union density, small versus large enterprises, South Korea,1989 and 2000

%

7570656055504540353025201510

50

Small enterprises

Large enterprises

1989 2000

9.5%

60.0%

1.1%

70.9%


322,619 women (21.07 per cent) versus 1,222,330 men (78.93 percent) belonging to unions (see Figure 2.4).9 While the increasedgap between male and female union members since the late 1980scan largely be attributed to the decline of small and medium-sizedmanufacturing firms, male-dominated trade unions also neglectedto address the disproportionate expansion of women in irregularemployment. Despite the steady rise in the overall proportion ofirregular workers from 1993 to 2005, particularly temporaryemployment which increased from 26.73 per cent to 33.29 percent during this period, the proportion of male temporary employ-ees decreased while female temporary employees increased (seeFigure 2.5).

OVERCOMING EXCLUSIONARY UNIONISM: ORGANIZINGTHE PERIPHERY

The division between the core zone of regular employment and theadjacent peripheral zone of irregular employment is fraught withconflict and contestation. Although these tensions reflect deep divi-sions along employment status and gender, they also have catalyzednew efforts to overcome exclusionary forms of unionism for periph-erally-employed groups of workers. These efforts represent twomain categories: first, overcoming divisions between regular and


Figure 2.3 Employment status, South Korea, 1989–2005

%65

60

55

50

45

40

35

301990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Regular

Irregular


SOUTH KOREA 33

Figure 2.4 Union membership by gender, 1970–2003

000s1,600

1,400

1,200

1,000

800

600

400

200

0

1970 1974 1978 1982 1986 1990 1994 1998 2002

1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002

Male union members

Female union members

Figure 2.5 Temporary employment by gender, 1989–2003

%58

56

54

52

50

48

46

44

42

40

Male temporary

56.47%

43.53%

Female temporary


irregular male workers, and second, overcoming divisions betweenmen and women workers.

Divisions between regular and irregular workers

As I highlighted earlier, some unions representing workers in thecore zone of regular employment have maintained and evenincreased union membership levels since the 1997 nationaleconomic crisis.10 Although this relatively privileged sector of theworkforce has been able to maintain higher than average marketwages and exercise some degree of influence during collectivebargaining negotiations, workers are not insulated from the hostileclimate surrounding them. In addition to corporate bankruptcy,plant mergers, workforce reductions and the transfer of managerialrights to foreign companies, regular workers face the constant inse-curity that their jobs will shift into the porous and adjacent zone ofirregular work. Most studies show that employers have preferred tohire irregular over regular workers since the 1997 economic crisis asa way to reduce labour costs. Increasing wage disparities betweenregular and irregular workers indicate that employers can hire irreg-ular workers at almost half the price of regular workers,emphasizing the cost advantage of hiring irregular workers. From2000 to 2005, the wage rate of irregular workers as a proportion ofthat of regular workers declined from 53.7 per cent to 50.9 per cent.Hiring workers under short-term contracted employment, tempo-rary agency employment, part-time employment and ‘specialemployment’ (tooksu goyong), a category similar to status as anindependent contractor, allows employers to hire workers undervirtually the same working conditions as regular employees (i.e.working hours, workplace supervision), except with no job securityand little or no benefits such as paid overtime and paid sick andvacation leave.

The perceived threat of labour cost-cutting and job displace-ment has exacerbated tensions among KCTU’s predominantlyregularly employed membership and the growing workforce ofirregularly employed workers. In their study of relations betweenregular and contract workers, Lee and Frenkel (2004) find thatcontract workers feel stigmatized and demoralized by the exclu-sionary behaviour and attitudes of regular workers, who excludecontract workers from social activities, blame them for taking jobsat such low pay and deny them resources and protections on the job.A study evaluating union attitudes by regular workers towardcontingent or irregular workers, based on a 2002 survey conducted



by the Korea Labour Institute (KLI), confirms these findings, high-lighting that the majority of union members and leaders are notwilling to act in genuine solidarity with irregular workers, especiallyif supporting the latter brings about a loss of their own interests.While some union members and leaders indicated that they werewilling to address some work-related grievances related to irregularworkers, they are much less willing to allow irregular workers tojoin their organizations as equal members. The persistence of nega-tive attitudes of regular union members versus irregular workers isespecially telling, given the strong tendency of employers to hirecontingent workers in establishments where the rate of unionmembership is high and the influence of unions is strong. Thisfinding supports the argument that employers tend to hire irregularworkers to cut labour costs as well as weaken the constraintsimposed by unions on managerial authority.

The refusal of unions representing regular workers to includeirregular workers in their organizations has resulted in majorclashes, both between irregular and regular workers in a singleworkplace and between unions representing regular workers and theleaders of industrial and national labour movement organizations.According to labour scholar Lee Byoung Hoon, these difficultiesstem from the authoritarian and patrimonial legacies of the enter-prise union system, which undercut worker solidarity both acrossand within firms. The case of the Korea Telecom (KT) ContractWorkers’ Union illustrates the deepening ‘solidarity crisis’ dividingregularly employed workers from peripherally employed workers inthe organized labour movement. From June to November 2000,7,000 contract workers at KT were issued dismissal notices under astate-initiated effort to privatize public utilities and make its work-force more ‘flexible’. KT had already shed 10,000 workers in 1998through ‘voluntary resignations’, and the public sector shed 131,000workers between 1998 and 2000, 11 per cent of the total publicsector workforce.11 Although contract workers were hired on anannual one-year basis, many had worked for the company for aslong as ten years and stated that they endured low wages (less thanhalf the average monthly wage of regular, full-time employees), 16-hour work days and the lack of benefits such as paid overtime andpaid sick and vacation leave in hopes of securing regular, full-timeemployment at one of the country’s most well-know public compa-nies.12 According to one worker at the Daegu office, ‘For six years,I worked harder than the regular employees, hoping to become one.So, the dismissal felt like a betrayal. Formal employment had been

SOUTH KOREA 35


my hope, what I’d given my youth to achieve.’13 The ‘betrayal’ bythe company was intensified by the subsequent ‘betrayal’ by regu-larly employed union members, when the 10,000-member KT unionwent on strike on 18 December and declared victory against thecompany a mere three days later, leaving the dismissed contractworkers to continue their fight alone.

For the next nine continuous months, contract workers esca-lated their struggle against KT, forming their own union andcontinuing their strike. According to union president, Hong JoonPyo, the strike was a ‘fight for their livelihoods’, and unionistswould not stop before they achieved victory (interview with author,16 October 2001). The company, however, refused to negotiate withthe union and only offered dismissed workers jobs in more insecureemployment as independent contractors. Union leaders tried tointensify the stakes of the struggle by staging militant occupationsthat would draw attention to the desperation and seriousness oftheir plight: union leaders shaved their heads to symbolize thegravity of their plight, they stormed and occupied the central KTheadquarters building, they climbed to the top of a major city bridgeon a cold winter day, they camped out in front of the company head-quarters in the middle of downtown Seoul. While the extrememilitancy of their actions was pivotal in attracting the attention ofthe broader democratic labour movement to the plight of irregularworkers, it also elicited increasing intervention by the state. Themilitant occupation of the KT company headquarters by 200 union-ists ended with a violent crackdown by 600 riot police, and arrestwarrants and prison sentences were subsequently issued for unionleaders who had engaged in the ‘illegal strike’. The KT ContractWorkers’ Union struggle also had become increasingly isolated fromother unionists, particularly other KT workers and the majority ofrank-and-file regular workers affiliated with the KCTU. Faced withincreasing police repression, little solidarity from other unionistsand no legal basis for their claims against the KT management, after512 continuous days the Korea Telecom Contract Workers’ Unionended their struggle with no resolution and dissolved their union.

The KT Contract Workers’ Union struggle very publiclyexposed the ‘solidarity crisis’ plaguing the KCTU-led democraticlabour movement. One leading activist explained:

The KT Contract Workers Union was significant politically. Itwas a fight against restructuring; it was the longest and mostbrutal of union struggles. Despite these difficulties, the union



members stayed devoted. Through the shear suffering theirbodies endured, they awakened the rest of the labour movementto the severity of the issues facing non-standard workers.

(interview with author, 11 August 2003)

The KT Contract Workers’ Union struggle, as well as an explosionof struggles by other irregular workers such as private home tutors,golf caddies, janitors, insurance salespersons, subcontractedworkers at Halla Heavy Industries and Daewoo Carrier Corpora-tion, and ready-mix concrete truck drivers among others, have laidthe basis for an emerging and broader-based movement under thebanner of irregular workers. While the KCTU leadership hasformally embraced the issue, the thrust of the emerging irregularworkers’ movement consists of a mixture of rank-and-file leaders ofirregular workers’ unions, including those that folded after unsuc-cessful struggles, KCTU union activists that actively supported thestruggles of irregular workers’ unions, and labour activists that arelinked to radical, left-wing labour organizations.

The KCTU Seoul Regional Centre is one hub of the irregularworkers’ movement. Because many existing unions refuse to allowirregular workers to join, irregular workers’ unions began affiliatingwith regionally based union organizations such as the KCTU SeoulRegional Organization.14 Since 1998 private home tutors, janitorsand other building service workers, hotel workers and broadcastsector workers among others represent the diversifying array ofworkers that have affiliated with the Seoul Regional Centre bydefault. The Jaenung Education Corporation Private Home Tutors’Union is one of the KCTU Seoul Regional Centre’s most dynamicmembers. In 1999 2,000 private home tutors formed a separateunion for workers classified as ‘specially employed workers’ (tooksugoyong) and launched a series of strikes that secured a historiccollective bargaining contract for these workers. Although theirunion has grown and they have maintained their influence at thebargaining table, they represent the exception, not the rule. Giventhat most irregular workers face an uphill legal battle for unionrecognition and possess little to no protection against employerretaliation for union activities, ‘one out of every two new unionsformed [by irregular workers] fails’ (interview with author, 15September 2001).

Alternative organizations such as Korean Solidarity for Contin-gent Workers (KSCW) have also been established to support theirregular workers’ movement. Before the KSCW was established in

SOUTH KOREA 37


2000, founding activists were key supporters of early struggles byirregular workers such as the 1999 struggle by dispatch workers atthe KBS Broadcasting Company and the 2000 struggle by janitors atSeoul National University. The mass-based political orientation ofleft labour activists that founded the KSCW is a crucial element oftheir support of irregular workers. According to one left activist:

Trade unions cannot become the kind of organization that justseeks to benefit their own members. Even if they are notmembers of their trade unions, in our society they have to fightfor the issues that affect the entire working class. Concretely, ifyou think of it this way, what is an issue that affects the entireworking class? It is the issue of non-standard workers. Eventhough they do not work at my workplace, they have no rights,they face much discrimination. We must work together to securetheir rights. So, in my opinion, unions have to be the kind oforganizations that can understand working class issues broadly.

(interview with author, 11 August 2003)

As a solidarity organization, the KSCW focuses on worker educa-tion and training, research on irregular workers, policy advocacyand legal reform, and direct organizational support of union strug-gles by irregular workers. It has also played a key role in nationalcampaigns to raise the minimum wage and broaden the focus of thelabour movement to include non-union issues that affect the welfareof the working poor and the lives of the expanding periphery ofirregular workers.

Divisions between men and women workers

The 1997–98 economic crisis also exacerbated discriminatoryemployer practices along gender lines. Because of the extreme wagedifferentials between male and female workers across every categoryof employment, women workers, who made up a small fraction ofKCTU’s membership and an even smaller fraction of the leadership,were consistently the target of irregular employment schemes.15 Incompanies that were undergoing ‘necessary workforce reductions’,women workers were encouraged by company managers and unionmembers alike to ‘voluntarily’ resign and accept re-employment asirregular workers at lower pay and with decreased job security.Although the media and the state emphasized the devastating effectsof unemployment on men, particularly fathers, narratives by womenworkers revealed the disproportionate impact on women. Choi Sang



Rim, a former student activist who worked underground in thelabour movement since the mid-1980s and later became the firstpresident of the Korean Women’s Trade Union, explained:

The IMF regime provided a momentum for the change ofKorean society as a whole. Without any social safety nets, thechanges fell heavily on the society’s margins, women. The trendson the informalization of women’s work were also found inother countries’ cases. However, when introduced, it was grad-uated or with social safety nets to reduce the total shocks. In thecase of South Korea, however, the coercive situation called theIMF made the margins totally absorb the situation. Currently,the rate of non-standard women workers is over 73 per cent.This is nonsense.

(Seo, 2004: 87)

The Korean Women Workers Associations United (KWWAU)attempted to publicize the discriminatory impact on women work-ers during mass rallies and marches by highlighting the ‘womenfired first’ principle of economic restructuring. However, theirefforts were largely ignored by the mass media, the state andunions. Any and all references urging unions to challenge discrim-inatory hiring and firing practices or address gender-specific griev-ances were also considered divisive and harmful to the broaderunity of the labour movement. This included calls by the growingworkforce of non-standard workers, both male and female, tochallenge individual unions’ role in fuelling the exploitation ofnon-standard workers. This was the case even in unions domi-nated by women members. At one union federation where Iconducted participant observation between 1998 and 1999, thedeputy director of the women workers’ division consistentlyexpressed disappointment that the union leadership viewedgender-related worker issues as subordinate and even detrimentalto the more urgent struggle against structural adjustment.

In the absence of support by the KCTU and the broader labourmovement, women worker activists have emerged as key supportactors in the irregular workers’ movement. Activists with theKWWAU, many of whom were linked to the women-led, minjung-based labour struggles in the 1970s and 1980s, repeatedly discussedthe need to organize women outside the KCTU-led democraticlabour movement during the 1990s. When the KWWA (KoreanWomen Workers Association) was first formed in 1987, leaders

SOUTH KOREA 39


decided to establish an external support organization, rather than amass-based popular organization, to allay the fears of male leadersthat creating a women-only organization would divide the unity ofthe broader democratic labour movement. As the KWWA grew toinclude regional women workers’ associations, it united under theumbrella of the KWWAU and engaged in worker education andtraining, research, policy and legal advocacy to address the inter-secting dimensions of gender and labour. Although the womenworkers’ movement identified their work as complementary andadvantageous to the struggle for democratic unionism, the conse-quence of the KCTU-led labour movement’s neglect andsubordination of women’s issues became all too clear. Despite theconsolidation of the KCTU into a national centre and its capacity tomobilize hundreds of thousands of workers, rates of union member-ship among women workers dwindled to a mere 5 per cent andwomen were largely unprotected from intensified forms of employerabuse and discrimination.

The need to devise alternative organizational forms tostrengthen the collective power of women workers sparked inter-nal debate within the women workers’ movement. As an NGO(non-governmental organization) not a union, the KWWAU waslimited to individual-based advocacy and legal reform. Althoughgrassroots-based counselling and advocacy were crucial foraddressing the immediate needs of women workers, these strate-gies had done little to mitigate the wide-reaching and structuralconsequences of downgraded women’s employment, especially inmanufacturing-based regions. The KWWAU’s international soli-darity networks with organizations such as the Self-EmployedWomen’s Association (SEWA) in India and the Women’s TradeUnion in Denmark convinced them of the benefits of establishingan autonomous women-only trade union. Internal conflict regard-ing the potential divisiveness of such actions on the broader labourmovement kept these plans in the preparation phase; however, theonset of the IMF crisis in late 1997–98 changed the tenor of thisdebate. In 1999, the National Women’s Trade Union (KWTU) wasofficially inaugurated as well as two other women’s unions, theSeoul Women’s Trade Union and the National Federation ofWomen’s Trade Unions affiliated with the KCTU.

All three unions were formed as a ‘definite and immediatereaction to the economic crisis and the neo-liberal restructuringwhich [had] thrown women workers out onto the streets andimpoverished them’ (PICIS, 2001). Women worker activists were



also ‘particularly motivated to install independent women’s labourorganizations separate from male-dominated labour unions andmale-cantered labour organizations’. All three women’s tradeunions believed that existing unions – the vast majority of whichwere male-dominated in leadership and union priorities – were ill-equipped to protect the needs and concerns of the vast majority ofwomen workers employed as non-standard workers. In manycases, unions themselves were responsible for the degradedemployment of women workers. Unions also refused to adapt theirorganizational tactics and strategies to fit the lives and concerns ofwomen workers, particularly married women workers. All threeunions also recognized that organizing women workers requiredpaying attention to gendered forms of discrimination and oppres-sion in the workplace such as a the gender gap in wages, sexualharassment and violence, and the need for alternative union strate-gies to build the leadership of workers whose responsibilities wereconsumed by work inside and outside the home. According toKWTU president Choi Sang Lim, ‘in order to organize womenworkers, we need a trade union model that takes into account theneeds of women workers, such as maternity protection, juggling ofwork and family, and relationship-oriented interaction at work’(interview with author, 21 November 2002).

Although the predominantly male leadership of the KCTUlargely resisted the formation of independent women’s trade unions,women’s trade unions, especially the KWTU, have demonstrated thesuccess and necessity of their approach. One leader of the KWTUrecalled:

When they heard that KWWAU was forming a women’s tradeunion, they criticized and scoffed, ‘Maybe we should also makea men’s trade union.’ They did not acknowledge how muchwomen are excluded within the labour movement and howmuch women are victims from restructuring policies that prior-itize men. And actually, from what I remember, all the maleunionists I knew opposed the creation of a separate women’strade union. They had absolutely no awareness around thisissue. So, there was a lot of conflict and tension. Of course, now,they can’t really say anything.

(interview with author, 15 October 2003)

Because of its historical and organizational legacies, the KWTU hasexperienced the most effectiveness in terms of scale and scope. The

SOUTH KOREA 41


KWWAU’s existing national infrastructure, which included branchoffices in nine metropolitan regions (Seoul, Incheon, Pusan,Kwangju, Buchon, Ansan-Siheung, Masan-Changwon, Oksan,Chonju and Taegu) provided a ready-made infrastructure uponwhich to expand its union membership. In the first year, the uniongained approximately 1,000 members and organized four local divi-sions – a union for golf game assistants at the 88 Country Club,cooks at Kyeongsang University, broadcast company media editorsand part-time workers at Daewoo Heavy Industries. KWTU’semphasis on organizing women workers who are not covered byexisting unions has also proved that some of the most vulnerableworkers can, in fact, be organized. As most women in Korea areemployed in the informal sector and under irregular contracts, theyare often not covered by existing labour legislation or trade unions.However, during its first year, 80 per cent of the total members ofthe union represented non-standard workers and 70 per cent weremarried women in their 30s and 40s. These figures matched thecurrent reality of women workers (64 per cent work in companieswith less than five workers and over 70 per cent are non-standard).‘By actually expanding the labour movement and securing theconstitutional right of workers to unite, the Korean Women’s TradeUnion is making significant strides in building a model of tradeunion organization for unorganized workers, which is a major taskof the Korean labour movement’ (Choi, 2000: 111). By 2005, theKWTU had grown to over 4,000 members and included membersfrom a wide variety of sectors including the service, manufacturingand clerical sectors.16

CONCLUSION: THE FRICTION OF NEW DIRECTIONS

Contestation over major fault lines along employment status andgender has played a crucial role in revitalizing the broader labourmovement. While I do not discount the very real and distinct ideo-logical differences that distinguish the women workers’ movementfrom militant factions of the democratic labour movement, frictionsbetween regular and irregular workers as well as men and womenhave called attention to the exclusionary practices of the KCTU-ledtrade union movement and created pressures upon the leadership torenew its democratic commitment to represent the workforce atlarge. Left labour activists and women worker activists also providea crucial source of support for irregular workers who are attemptingto organize unions and secure collective bargaining agreements inthe face of legal obstacles and employer hostility.



The forces fuelling the revitalization of the Korean labour move-ment reveal the significance of recognizing how global economicforces associated with the disintegration of trade union movementsare also operating to revitalize their democratic character. In theSouth Korean case, although the drive to implement neoliberallabour flexibility has severely undermined the legitimacy andleverage of union militancy – which is its historical source of power– it has also exposed the uneven terrain upon which labour flexi-bility is carried out. While existing differences in the labour marketalong gender and employment lines form the basis of an expandingperiphery of lower-paid, more insecure and socially marginalworkers, they also generate new frictions that are resulting in newstrategies and institutional forms to organize peripherally employedworkers. Thus, rather than view frictions as splintering sources ofunity and strength for the labour movement, the South Korean casehighlights the importance of recognizing the possibilities and newdirections that result from shifting lines of inclusion and exclusionunder processes of globalization.

NOTES

1 There are a myriad of terms to describe the array of insecure forms ofnon-standard employment, including ‘casual’, ‘contingent’ and ‘tempo-rary’. For the purposes of this paper, which address the issue of non-stan-dard employment in South Korea, I shall use the term ‘irregular’ to referto the Korean term bi jong gyu jik.

2 Rising real wages of workers in small and medium-sized labour-inten-sive manufacturing firms destabilized the low-cost advantage theygained from the ‘cheap’ labour force, and capital began fleeing enmasse from South Korea’s export-processing zones (see Kim, H.-M.,1997 and 1998; Kim, S.-K., 1996 and 1997).

3 Employers also introduced ‘automation and rationalization technologyto their workplaces’ to reorganize production processes in line withflexible management schemes, and advocated new wage payment poli-cies that delinked job security and wage levels from internal labourmarkets (see Koo, 2000 and 2002).

4 KCTU responded by organizing the largest general strike in the nation’scontemporary history. 400,000 workers from 528 different KCTU-affiliated unions participated in the one-month nationwide strike, andat its height, participation levels reached 1 million workers, whichrepresented the first time that KCTU and FKTU went on striketogether.

5 See calls for international solidarity on the KCTU website athttp://kctu.org/; accessed 30 October 2006.

6 This tactic has led desperate unionists such as the branch president of

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Hanjin Heavy Industries, Kim Joo-ik, to immolate himself in protest atthe untenable fines that force workers as well as their friends andfamily into bankruptcy (KCTU, 2005).

7 This diagram is adapted from the model on the ‘Flexible worlds ofwork’ in Holdt and Webster (2006: 6). Like South Africa, where only6.6 out of 20.3 million workers are employed as full-time workers, thecore zone of relatively protected and privileged workers in South Koreaalso constitutes less than one-third of the economically active popula-tion. However, the size of the unemployed population is considerablysmaller in South Korea, 979,000 versus 8.4 million in South Africa,making the irregular and peripheral zones a more significant anddynamic component of the flexible world of work.

8 Figures from National Statistics Office. Table: Employed persons bystatus of worker by gender.

9 Figures from National Statistics Office. Table: Labour unions andunionized members by gender.

10 In a study of five firms in the metal sector, the largest union grew from34,829 members in 1997 to 37,625 members in 2001. The next twolargest unions roughly maintained union membership levels over thisfive-year period, growing nominally from 11,413 to 11,494 anddeclining nominally from 20,936 to 20,859 (Jeong, 2005: 50).

11 Figures from 2002 report by the Korean Federation of Transportation,Public, and Social Service Union.

12 Contract workers mainly represented two groups of workers: 1) maleworkers that installed and repaired telephone and ADSL lines and 2)female workers that operated 114 telephone directory assistance.

13 J.W. Kim, six years, KT Daegu office. Quoted from Labour NewsProduction feature documentary, Friend or Foe.

14 In the late 1980s, regional workers’ centres represented the centre ofradical organizing efforts by newly formed democratic unions (minjunojo) to overcome the constraints of enterprise unionism. As more localunions affiliated with industry-based national federations and moreradical regional centres were suppressed by the state, regional centresmainly focused on addressing the grievances of non-union workers andother workers who ‘slipped through the cracks’ (interview with author,1 October 2001).

15 If employers hire an irregular worker, they will pay only 52.6 per centof the average monthly wage of a regular worker. If employers hire anirregular female worker, they will pay only 42.7 per cent of the averagewage. This is the case in every employment category, where hiringfemale workers will reduce wage costs from between one-third andover two-thirds of what it costs to employ male workers.

16 For a more comprehensive analysis of specific cases of union organizing,see Chun (2005 and 2006).



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