Legal Liminality: the gender and labour politics of organising South Korea's irregular workforce

Abstract

Irregular employment (bij[ocheck]nggyujik) has become the dominant form of employment in South Korea, with upwards of 70% of women employed in this sector. This transformation has not only affected the demographics of the labour market, but it has also fundamentally reshaped how unions can organise workers and build collective power. In particular, irregular workers are faced with a state of legal liminality in which workers are neither fully protected by nor fully denied the rights of formal employment, resulting in classification struggles over the terms and conditions of irregular employment. Drawing from recent cases, this paper discusses the limits of masculinised forms of labour militancy and the prospects for developing more inclusive forms of unionism across gender and employment status. Interrogating how workers and their collective organisations are challenging the ‘legal liminality’ associated with downgraded forms of irregular employment is crucial for understanding the new dynamics of economic marginality and social exclusion in Korea as well as in the broader global economy.

Notes

1 Letter in the author's possession, dated 20 December 2007, emailed by KORAIL General Manager ([email protected]) on behalf of Mr Chul Lee, CEO and president of KORAIL in response to ‘the petition that you submitted to the Korean president through Ms Cho Sun Kyung, Professor of Ewha Womans University’.

2 An international solidarity appeal was issued in June 2007 and signatures were collected on an international petition which was sent to Mr Chul Lee, to South Korean President, Roh Moo-hyun, and to UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon. For a copy of the international solidarity appeal and petition, see http://ktxworkers.blogsome.com.

3 During the nearly year-and-a-half struggle, striking KTX train attendants held public rallies, occupied public buildings and KORAIL offices, collected signatures on a national petition, gave lectures in university classrooms, conducted outreach on the streets of Seoul and waged a ‘last resort’ hunger strike at the Seoul Railway Station.

4 Korean Ministry of Labour, Result of Survey on Labor Conditions by Type of Employment, No 29, 4 January 2008.

5 ‘The employment relationship’, 2006 Report V(1), International Labour Conference, 95th Session, International Labour Office, Geneva.

6 For an insightful account of labour's ‘liminality’, see E Rothenbuhler, ‘The liminal fight: mass strikes as ritual and interpretation’, in J Alexander (ed), Durkheimian Sociology: Cultural Studies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp 66–89.

7 JJ Chun, Organizing at the Margins: Labor Politics and Globalization in South Korea and the United States, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009. See also P Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984; Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, Cambridge: Polity, 1991; and Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.

8 JJ Chun, Organizing at the Margins. See also JJ Chun, ‘Public dramas and the politics of justice: comparison of janitors’ union struggles in South Korea and the United States’, Work and Occupations, 32, 2005, pp 486–503.

9 J Ahn, What have We Learned about Alternative Employment Relationships in Korea?, Issue Paper, Korea Labour Institute, Seoul, 2002, p 3.

10 RS Jones, The Labour Market in Korea: Enhancing Flexibility and Raising Participation, OECD Economics Department Working Papers, 469, 16 December 2005, p 4.

11 Ibid, p 13.

12 See G Standing, ‘Global feminization through flexible labor: a theme revisited’, World Development, 27, 1999, pp 583–602.

13 J Ahn, ‘Nonstandard work in Japan and Korea—the origin of wage differentials’, unpublished paper, Korea Labour Institute, Seoul, 2006, pp 23–24.

14 SH Lee, The Impact of Neo-liberal Globalization: Irregular Jobs, Informal Sector Work and Poverty in Asian Workers, Seoul: Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, 2002, p 14.

15 Korean Ministry of Labour, Result of Survey on Labor Conditions by Type of Employment.

16 SK Kim, Class Struggle or Family Struggle? The Lives of Women Factory Workers in Korea, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997; H Koo, Korean Workers: The Culture and Politics of Class Formation, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001; and SO Chun, They Are Not Machines: Women Workers and Their Fight for Democratic Trade Unions in the 1970s, London: Ashgate, 2004.

17 Korean Women Workers Associations United (KWWAU), South Korean Women Workers and Globalization, Seoul: KWWAU, 2000, p 35.

18 Ibid, p 38.

19 An estimated 300 000 workers were already employed in 3000 labour dispatch companies by 1995. See M Rhie, ‘Globalization of the flexibilization of labor in South Korea’, paper presented at the BAYAN-sponsored People's Conference against Imperialist Globalization, November 1996.

20 KH Moon, ‘Gender impact of employment adjustment in post-1997 Korea: cases of Hyundai Motor Company and the commercial banking industry’, unpublished paper, Australian National University, 2007. See also SK Cho, ‘Hanb[obreve]bŭl kachanghanwib[obreve]bŭinonri: nonghy[obreve]bŭi sanaepupu us[obreve]n haegowa ‘ŭitoch[obreve]k ch'apy[obreve]r’ (The logic of unlawfulness under the disguise of lawfulness), in SK Cho (ed), Nodong Gwa P'eminichŭm (Labour and Feminism), Seoul: Ewha Women's University Press, 2000, pp 138–170.

21 See J Song, ‘Family breakdown and homeless women: neoliberal governance during the Asian debt crisis in South Korea, 1997–2001’, Positions, 14 (1), 2006, pp 37–65.

22 YS Moh, ‘Organizational strategies of irregular women workers’, Working Women: Newsletter of Korean Women Workers Associations United, 17, 1999.

23 Korea Labour Institute, Analysis of Labor Force Conditions in the First Half of 1999, Seoul: Korea Labour Institute, 2000.

24 BH Lee & SJ Frenckel, ‘Divided workers: social relations between contract and regular workers in a Korean auto company’, Work, Employment and Society, 18 (3), 2004, pp 507–530.

25 KCTU Report on Recent Situation of Labour Laws and Industrial Relations, Seoul: KCTU, 2005.

26 ‘Not all workers the same as firms exploit new rules’, Korea Central Daily, 4 May 2004.

27 Moon, ‘Gender impact of employment adjustment’, 2007, p 4.

28 Policy and Information Center of International Solidarity (PICIS), ‘The Organising of Women Workers and their Struggles, Part 3’, February 2001, p 80.

29 Moon, ‘Gender impact of employment adjustment’, 2007, p 5.

30 SR Choi, Working Women: Newsletter of Korean Women Workers Associations United, 1997.

31 The two other unions included the Seoul Women's Trade Union and the KCTU-affiliated Korean Women's Federation of Trade Unions.

32 SR Choi, ‘The reality of Korean women workers and the activities of the Korean Women's Trade Union’, in Strategies of Organizing Women Workers in the 21st Century: The Experiences of the Women's Trade Union and its Future Tasks, Seoul: Korean Women's Trade Union, 2000, p 11.

33 For extended discussion of this case, see Chun, Organizing at the Margins, ch 6.

34 Interview with 88 Country Club union leader, Kyonggi province, 11 October 2002.

35 Ibid.

36 JY Park, SH Han, MS Kim & JH Lee, Women's Organizing Model for Women's Empowerment, research report presented at the Second Anniversary of the Korean Women's Trade Union, Seoul: Korean Women Workers Associations United and Korean Women's Trade Union, 2001.

37 Korean Contingent Workers Centre, ‘Recognize specially employed workers as workers’, Contingent Worker, June 2002.

38 See JJ Chun, ‘The contested politics of gender and irregular employment: the revitalization of the South Korean Democratic Labour Movement’, in A Bieler, I Lindberg & D Pillay (eds), Labour and the Challenges of Globalisation: What Prospects for Transnational Solidarity?, London: Pluto Press, 2008, pp 23–44.

39 I Kwon, ‘Militarism in my heart: militarization of women's consciousness and culture in South Korea’, unpublished PhD thesis, Clark University, 2000.

40 ‘E-Land labor union marks 300th day of strike’, The Hankyoreh, 17 April 2008.