• Korean Journal of Labor Studies
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.139-176
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• 2011

Non-regular workers came to the fore while working class formation was in retreat along with the democratic labor movement of regular workers. The formation of principal agents, however, is yet to occur. Then, why non-regular workers' struggles could not yield a consequence in that regard? What kind of factors are to determine the outcome of the struggles and how do they do it? It is the aim of this study to answer those questions. In contrast with regular workers' struggles, non-regular workers' struggles tend to break out in response to capitalist offensives, rely on atypical and, often, extreme measures of struggle rather than strike in the form of work stoppage, drag out for too long, and appeal for social solidarity outside when the solidarity of regular workers is not available. Non-regular workers' struggles tend to end up with failure rather than success, and with weakening rather than strengthening of their organizational strength. So as to overcome the tendency to fail, non-regular workers' struggles need regular workers' solidarity in addition to their own strong mobilization power, while social solidarity or positional power could substitute for regular workers' solidarity in some cases. So as to build up their organizational strength, non-regular workers' struggles should win victories in the struggles, while a victory could turn into a trap in the case of conversion. Both regular workers' solidarity and the internal integration of the struggles are two foremost important factors in achieving the victory of struggles and the building-up of organizational strength. Those who have got involved in struggles are from the best organized sector among all the non-regular workers. As they have gone through weakening of organizational strength, it becomes more difficult for non-regular workers to form principal agents. Without non-regular workers' struggles, however, the capitalist offensives must have carried the day. In that sense, non-regular workers' struggles did a role in at least detaining capitalist offensives, if not stopping them. The practical implication of non-regular workers' struggles is that, if non-regular workers redefine the ultimate goal of their struggles as the formation of their principal agents for working class formation, it would be a strategically rational choice to identify the strategic objective of struggles with the maintaining and strengthening of their organizational strength rather than the achievement of their immediate demands.

• Korean Journal of Labor Studies
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.209-242
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• 2011

본 연구는 현대하이스코 순천공장과 포스코 광양제철소에서의 비정규직 조직화 비교를 통해 사내하청 노동조합의 조직화에 영향을 미치는 작업장 요인과 지역사회 요인들을 살펴보고자 하였다. 기존의 비정규직 노동자 조직화를 비롯한 노동운동, 노동조합 관련 연구들은 대부분 '생산의 정치'의 영역에서 비롯된 '작업장' 요인들에 초점을 맞추고 있다. 그러나 비정규직 노동자 조직화에 대한 보다 분석을 보다 발전시키기 위해서는 작업장뿐만 아니라 '스케일의 정치'가 작동하는 공간인 '지역사회' 또한 분석의 단위로 통합되어야 한다. 따라서 본 연구는 작업장에서의 정규직 및 비정규직 노동자들에 대한 관리통제와 실천뿐만 아니라, 지역사회의 다양한 요인들이 비정규직 노동자들의 조직화 시도에 어떠한 영향을 미치는지를 검토하고자 한다. 두 사례에서 사내하청 노동자들은 철강산업이라는 산업부문과 사내하청 고용형태에 속한다는 공통점 외에도 낮은 수준의 임금과 노동조건하에서 강한 불만을 지니고 있었으며, 원청 및 사내하청 업체의 강한 통제하에 놓여 있었다는 공통점을 지닌다. 그럼에도 포스코의 경우와 달리 현대하이스코 비정규직 노동자들은 격렬한 대중투쟁과 지역사회의 지원 속에서 성공적인 조직화를 이룰 수 있었다. 사내하청 노동조합 결성 과정 또한 상이하였다. 현대하이스코의 경우 누적된 사내하청노동자들의 불만이 계약해지를 계기로 일순간 터져 나오면서 작업장 점거농성을 비롯한 대중투쟁과 결합하였다. 나아가 현대하이스코 비정규직지회는 지역사회운동과의 연대를 통해 작업장의 문제를 전체 비정규직 노동문제로 확대해 나갔다. 반면, 포스코의 경우 초기 조직화의 범위가 제한적이었고 대중투쟁 또한 강하게 나타나지 않았으며 지역사회의 관심과 지원 또한 약하게 나타났다. 이상과 같이 두 사례를 비교 검토함으로써 비정규직의 조직화에 있어 비정규직 자체 동원기제와 정규직의 지원은 여전히 중요하게 작용하지만, 이것이 확보되지 않을 경우 지역사회를 비롯한 외부의 지원이 일정하게 작용함을 살펴볼 수 있었다. 그러나 이 역시 지역사회구조 및 지역사회운동의 성격에 영향을 받는 것으로 나타났다.

• Korean Journal of Labor Studies
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.1-45
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• 2017

The aim of this study is to analyze the process of the struggle and bargaining for the change of the employment position of the irregular (in-house subcontracted) workers being at work in the Hyundai Motor Company (HMC) plants into the status of the regular employee of the company, and evaluate the results and limitation of the irregular workers' movement. Since the unionization of irregular workers in 2003, they have carried on the struggle against and the bargaining with the HMC, over the past 10 years and more, making claims for abolishing 'illegal temporary agency work' and for converting their positions into the regular ones. The HMC have gradually altered a confrontational stance against the workers' claim at the early stage, into the bargaining relationship with irregular workers' union. Eventually, the collective agreement on the 'special hiring' of about six thousands irregular workers by the HMC was reached in 2016. We attempt to analyze in depth the overall process by dividing three phases of the movement, according to the criteria of the relationship between the alliance and conflict system, and the cycle of protests of irregular workers. Furthermore, we try to trace the long and winding path of the movement, focusing on the cooperation/conflict relationship within the movement's alliance system, the confrontation/bargaining relationship between the movement and the conflict system, and the critical roles played by mediators (or third parties) between two systems. In the conclusion of the paper, we evaluate the results and limitation of the irregular workers' movement upon the basis of the following points; the convergence of the workers' demands into the prime goal of 'becoming HMC's regular employee,' the breakaway of regular workers' union from the movement's alliance system, and a virtual extinction of irregular workers' union after the final labor-management agreement of 2016.

• Korean Journal of Labor Studies
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.157-196
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• 2018

This study analyzes non-standard workers' attitudes and behaviors towards standard workers' strikes using the case of a joint strike held by journalists at KBS and MBC in 2012. Tracing the process since 2008 by which a conservative government has tried to control the press and regular journalists have collectively resisted against it, we put our analytical focus on two major groups of freelance broadcast professionals: independent producers and writers in current affairs. Specifically, we examine 1) how they perceived and responded to a series of regular journalists' struggle to protect journalistic value, 2) how such perception of and response to regular journalists could be developed, and 3) how (de)solidarity could form and then deepened between freelance and regular journalists in the 2012 Media Strike. Our findings show that the ways in which regular journalists had controlled freelance journalists at work affected the relationship between class-based and occupation-based rationality freelance journalists held in their minds. Independent producers, who had developed a strong class-based rationality in response to the coercive input-output control, showed cynicism about regular journalists' strike pointing out their hypocrisy and contradiction. In contrast, freelance writers accommodated and joined the strike by regular workers in the spirit of solidarity based on occupational rationality which had developed from normative, process control. Our paper ends with theoretical and practical implications.

• Women's Studies Review
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.93-116
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• 2014

This thesis discussed the status of women workers as wage laborers and home laborers and the valid of a documentary movie for representing women laborers through a documentary movie, Weabak that revolved around Home-ever occupation strike leaded E-Land labor union at 30th June, 2007. Jobs for women labors got covered by the flow of flexibility with the policy of labor flexibility in South Korea during 1990s. The reasons that justify this trend are their position in the households, and their roles in working places are not very important because there are not required difficult skills. The mass dismissal which caused the E-Land strike also shared these ideologies. In Weabak, since women laborers were always expected to care for their family, they were need strikes in their home as well as their working place. However, a household is a basement for them to get the identity as a women laborer. It has two ambivalent meanings, as a protected area and disorder for them to pursue their life at the same time. Identity of Women laborers, domestic laborers as well as wage laborers, are very difficult to identify as a general noun, a laborer. Weabak is an important example to show us the possibility of a documentary as searching new realism for representing women laborers' story using their own perspective.

• Korean Journal of Labor Studies
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.1-28
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• 2018

This paper studies and evaluates the present situation of three decades of 'Minjoonojoundong' in Korea with a long-term perspectives. It had grown up during 1987 labour regime era and has declined abruptly since 1998. The backdrop of this decline was the transformation of labour regime from the 1987 regime to the dependent neoliberal one. The Korean labour movement did not respond to the changed structural conditions as it sustained its old strategies, militant unionism. Now the 'Minjoonojoundong' in Korea has met three difficult problems that are connected with each others. They are militant economism, political economism and formal industrial unionism. However the 'Candlelight Revolution' occurred in 2016 winter has opened a chance of regime change that could strengthen the 'Minjoonojoundong'. The revolution was primarily a political one. But it also created a dramatic situation change in labour politics. The candle-citizen demanded radical change of the polarized Korean society and overflown contingent workers. So it is a time of radical and overall innovation for the 'Minjoonojoundong' and KCTU. And they have to keep the long-term strategical vision of labour regime change.

• Korean Journal of Labor Studies
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.95-136
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• 2018

As the number of precariats grows, their poor labor rights and working conditions are becoming issues of major concern all over the world but how to represent their interests is still controversial. Basically, the union is the institutional mechanism for representing the labor rights. However, it is difficult for workplaceand enterprise-based unions to fully represent the labor rights of precarious workers. Recently, so-called community unions have emerged in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan as independent organizations representing the rights of non-standard workers. Community unions refer to labor unions which organize precarious workers across firms at the regional level. They are known to be suitable for covering the unemployed, job seekers, indirect employment workers, short-term contract workers, and small-firm workers. In South Korea, since the financial crisis in 1997, a dramatic increase in the number of precariats leads to emergence of new types of trade unions such as the Youth Community Union, the Arbeit Workers' Union, the Artist Social Union and the Korea Musician's Union. They have engaged in various activities to guarantee the labor rights of precariats. Recently, researchers have also tried to identify defining characteristics of these new forms of unionism. To expand research on trade unionism in South Korea, this study compares two different types of community unions: the Youth Community Union and the Arbeit Workers' Union. We believe that this attempt can contribute to the research on the alternative labor movement. For this purpose, this study starts with theoretical discussions on community unions, and compares the Youth Community Union with the Arbeit Workers' Union based on the five characteristics of community unionism: membership and organization structure, the recognition struggle, the type or scope of interest, solidarity with other civic organizations, and the repertoire of resistance strategies. Based on this comparative analysis, this study seeks to foresee the possibility of how community unionism will develop in South Korean in the future.