Posts Tagged asia
Ssangyong motors strike in South Korea ends in defeat and heavy repression
Posted by APOC-Philly in General on August 21, 2009
Loren Goldner’s analysis and overview of the defeated strike and occupation of the Ssangyong Motors plant against job cuts.
The Ssangyong Motor Company strike and plant occupation in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, ended after 77 days on Aug. 5. For the 976 workers who seized the small auto plant on May 22 and held it against repeated quasi-military assault, the settlement signed by Ssangyong court receivership manager Park Young-tae and local union president Han Sang-kyun represented a near-total defeat. Worse still, the surrender was followed by detention and interrogation of dozens of strikers by police, possibly to be followed by felony charges, as well by a massive ($45 million) lawsuit against the Korean Metal Workers’ Union and probable further lawsuits against individual strikers for damages incurred during the strike. The hard-right Korean government of Lee Myong Bak is signaling with these measures—its latest and most dramatic “take no prisoners” victory over popular protest in the past year and a half– its intention to steamroller any potential future resistance to its unabashed rule on behalf of big capital.
The Ssangyong strike echoed in many ways the dynamic seen in the recent Visteon struggle in the UK and in battles over auto industry restructuring around the world. Involving, on the other hand, an outright factory seizure and occupation, and subsequent violent defense of the plant against the police, thugs and scabs, it was the first struggle of its kind in South Korea for years. Its defeat—one in a long series of defeats extending over years—does not bode well for future resistance.
Ssangyong Motor Company was taken over three years ago by China’s Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, which holds 51% ownership. At the time, the Pyeongtaek plant (located about 45 minutes from Seoul) had 8700 employees; by the time of the strike, it had only 7000. In February the company filed for bankruptcy, proposing a restructuring and offering the Pyeongtaek plant as collateral for further loans to re-emerge from bankruptcy. The court approved the bankruptcy plan, pending adequate layoffs to make the company profitable again.
The management strategy seems to have been a long-term whittling down of personnel combined with acquisition of technology for operations in China. Since the Shanghai Automotive takeover, there has been no new investment at Ssangyong Motors, and no new car model launched. (Korean prosecutors have raised questions over the legality of the technology transfer to China, since the technology in question was developed with Korean government subsidies, but to date no legal action has been taken.) In December 2008 there was also a brief job action protesting this technology transfer.
Following the decision of the bankruptcy court, workers at the plant responded in April with warning strikes against pending layoffs. This evolved on May 22 into a full strike, plant takeover and occupation by 1700 workers when the list of workers to be laid off was announced. The strike focused on three main demands: 1) no layoffs 2) no casualization and 3) no outsourcing. The company wanted to force 1700 workers into early retirement and has fired 300 casuals.
The Ssangyong workers are organized in the Korean Metal Workers Union (KMWU) and have worked an average of 15-20 years in the factory. A regular worker earns a base pay of approximately 30,000,000 won (currently ca. $25,000) per year; a casual earns about 15,000,000 for the same work. (In Korea, the base pay is only part of the salary, which includes benefits –for regular workers—as well as significant overtime paid at a higher rate, often 10 hours a week and accepted, or even desired, by most workers as a necessary income supplement.)
As of mid-June, about 1000 workers were continuing the occupation, with wives and families providing food. About 5000 workers not slated for layoff stayed at home, and about 1000 supervisory staff scabbed, mainly maintaining machines, though no cars were produced once the occupation began.
There was in the early weeks little mass police presence in Pyeongtaek. This was due at least in part to the ongoing political crisis in South Korea following the recent suicide of ex-president Noh Mu Hyeon and subsequent large-scale demonstrations expressing growing outrage against the current right-wing government of Lee Myong Bak. The Lee government, elected in December 2007 on a program of high economic growth and already somewhat discredited by repeated blatant measures in favor of the wealthy and by the world crisis, was initially taken aback by the depth of outrage revealed in demonstrations mobilizing up to one million people. After the unleashing of riot police following Noh’s funeral provoked further outrage and brought more people to the streets, the government was at first unwilling to risk further disenchantment by an early assault on the Pyeongtaek factory.
On June 16, a large anti-strike rally of more than 1500 people was held outside the factory gates. The rally was attended by the 1000 supervisory scabs, 200 hired thugs and 300 workers not on the layoff list and not supporting the strike. 400 riot police stood by, doing nothing, and finally declared the scab assembly illegal, apparently due to fear that the occupying workers and their supporters might attack it.
During the scab rally, about 700-800 workers from nearby factories, such as the Kia Motor company, had come to defend the Ssangyong plant, in part in response to a text message tree of the KMWU.
The occupying workers made plans for armed defense against any police attempt to recapture the plant, stocking iron pipes and Molotov cocktails. As a further fallback plan, they prepared to concentrate in the paint department, where the flammable materials (in their estimate) would dissuade the police from firing tear gas cannisters and setting off a conflagration. (This calculation did prove correct, as we shall see, but it ultimately proved of no avail.)
I spoke to one activist participating in the occupation and critical of the role of the union. In his view, the KMWU remained in control of the strike. However, in contrast to role of the unions in the Visteon struggle in the UK and in the dismantling of the US auto industry, the KMWU supported the illegal actions of seizing the plant and preparing for its armed defense. On the other hand, in negotiations with the company, it concentrated on the demand for no layoffs and soft-pedaled the demands for job security for all and against out-sourcing.
The core occupation of the plant was powered by 50 or 60 rank-and-file groups of 10 workers each, who in turn elected a delegate (chojang) for coordinated action. According to the same critical activist, these chojang are the most combative and class-conscious workers.
Once again, the Ssangyong strike initially benefited from a favorable political climate, which put the Korean government on the back foot, but it is up against the deep crisis of the world auto industry and the world economic crisis generally. The nearby Kia Motor Company plant was itself in the middle of critical negotiations for crisis measures, and GM-Daewoo is being hit with the world reorganization of GM. The company strategy, as in the case of Visteon, has been at best slow attrition (already underway since 2006) or even an outright closing of the plant.
In late June, the government and company dropped their wait-and-see attitude and began to go on the offensive. On June 22, stiff lawsuits had already been filed against 190 strikers. A few days later, one fired and heavily-indebted worker committed suicide. The broader social and political climate continued to harden, with groups ranging from school teachers to monks attacking the government’s accelerating drift to the right, and the forces of order, led by the ruling Hanaradang (Grand National) Party, branded such critics as sympathizers of North Korea. Demonstrations of strike supporters took place periodically in Seoul and in Pyeongtaek, but rarely assembled more than a few thousand people.
On June 26th-27th a serious government and employer attack on the plant resumed , as hired thugs, scabs recruited from the workers not slated for firing, and riot police tried to enter the factory. They secured the main building after violent fighting in which many people were injured. The occupying workers retreated to the paint sector, which was part of the (above-mentioned) strategy. (In January, five people in Seoul died in another fire set off during a confrontation with police, sparking weeks of outrage.).
On the following day, the company issued a statement declaring that there had been enough violence, but in reality in recognition of the tenacious worker resistance, and police and thugs were withdrawn. The company urged the government to involve itself directly in negations.
Ever since the attack of the 26th-27th, aimed at isolating Ssangyong’s struggle and breaking the strike, solidarity actions outside the plant were attempting to build broader support. These included a street campaign, mainly from family organizations in the center of Seoul and in the Pyeongtaek area, and a 4-hour general strike by the KMWU during which metal workers from nearby plants rallied in front of Ssangyong factory gate.
Then, on July 1, all water was cut off, which in the hot and humid Korean summer ultimately forced workers to trap rain water as they could and make improvised toilets from barrels when all toilets backed up. All access to the plant was blocked and negotiations collapsed.
On July 4th , and July 11 the KCTU (Korean Confederation of Trade Unions) held nationwide labor rallies in support of the Ssangyong’s struggle. These actions were, however , poorly attended and the leadership of the KMWU hesitated in declaring an all-out strike in response to the attacks on the plant. Activists think the KMWU and KCTU leaderships were more preoccupied with upcoming union elections. (927 activists also held a one –day hunger strike in the center of Seoul on July 11.) (From my experience in Korea over the past four years, these are largely ritual actions which rarely influence the outcome of a struggle, except as barometers of weakness and isolation.)
Finally, on July 16, 3,000 KMWU members gathered to support the Ssangyong strike in front of the Pyeongtaek City Hall. When they tried to move to the factory after the rally, they were blocked by police and 82 workers were arrested on the spot. During one subsequent (and failed) attempt to reach the plant gate with food and water, company thugs went out of their way to break every bottle of water.
The gloves really came off on Monday July 20. Here is the military situation as described by a worker from nearby Kia Motor Company who came, with hundreds of others, to help defend the plant against an attack by 3000 police, thug and scabs:
When we finished night shift work at 5:30 this morning, we went to Pyeongtaek to the front gate of the Ssangyong factory where the struggles were going on, just as they had on the previous day.
By 9:00 or 10:00 AM many buses loaded with riot police were arriving at the gate, as well as approximately 20 fire-fighting vehicles as well.
While 2,000 riot police were trying to get near the paint plant, the workers responded with slingshots and sometimes Molotov cocktails. A catapult using bolts and nuts had a range of 200-300 meters and was effective. Tires placed in an effort to defend the plant were burning, and the black smoke covered the sky over the factory.
The company had cut off water and gas supplies and enforced a blockade on all material for workers from outside, including medical supplies. The company seems to have as a first strategy wearing people down to get them to leave the paint plant spontaneously.
Later that day, a police helicopter was spreading tear gas against workers who were fighting on the housetops.
On 21 July, the KCTU declared a general strike from July 22nd to the 24th , and scheduled a nationwide labor rally on Saturday July 25th. The KMWU announced partial strikes on the 22nd and 24th in support of the Pyeongtaek strike and of ongoing negotiations. These strikes, which the KCTU in particular is in the habit of calling with neither follow-through or serious support, remained scattered and ineffective.
The same Kia worker, fighting police at the plant gate, reported these events as follows on July 22:.
Starting July 20th, with a court order, more than 3,000 riot police, including a ranger unit, had tried to seize the plant and ordered workers out of the factory. After the workers rejected this order, the police launched an attack against occupying workers for 7 consecutive days, and this attack also involved hired thugs and scabs from workers not laid off.
The police are conducting round-the-clock ideological propaganda, and a police helicopter is flying low to prevent workers from sleeping and to unnerve them.
They have cut off the supplies of water and and gas and are refusing factory entry to humanitarian medical help. (Electricity has been left on to prevent paint and other flammable materials in the paint plant from decomposing.)
From the 21st onward, the police have been dropping tear gas from helicopters onto workers struggling on the roof of the paint sector. That gas includes a toxic material that can melt sponge rubber.
Intermittently, when the riot police try to get into the paint plant, they use a special gun firing 50,000 volts and nails, while the scabs are using slingshots from the building opposite.
Naturally, we are fighting the police with iron pipes and Molotov cocktails on the street in front of the factory to defend the strike.
By the end of July, the approximately 700 workers left in the plant were eating a rice ball with salt instead of regular meals, and drinking boiled rain. Though many workers had been injured during the fight, they resolutely continued their struggle.
On Jul. 20th, one union official’s wife committed suicide at her home. Even though her husband was not laid off, he participated in the struggle despite several threats from management. His wife was just 29 years old. Thus far five people have died or committed suicide in as a result of this struggle.
On July 25, the KCTU held a rally in front of the Pyeongteck railway station. After that rally, the workers and other participants, armed with iron pipes and stones from the sidewalk, fought against riot police, while attempting to march to the Ssangyong factory gate. A brutal attack by police forced us to retreat from the front of the factory. Struggles continued late into the night on the streets of Pyeongtaek.
We of the KMWU are scheduled to launch a 6 -hour general strike on July 29th but as you know, it is so difficult to mobilize all union members to participate in such a strike.
Management has been seeking the moral high ground, claiming they may be forced into bankruptcy.
Amid growing pressure from some civic organizations, and some congressman, management and the Ssangyong union were scheduled to meet on July 25th. But the management cancelled that meeting unilaterally, for the sole reason (they claimed) that the workers still throwing bolts and that they could not accept the union’s demand of no layoffs but with all dismissed workers rotating on unpaid temporary retirement.
The management rejected union’s concession, and said that they will only accept layoffs.
On July 27, the Ssangyong workers held a press conference and another rally in front of the paint plant, escaping for a while the suffocating atmosphere inside.
The demands of that rally were:
1) Withdrawal of the police
2) Direct negotiation with management and government
3) Release of the results of the investigation into illegal effluence resulting from the use of hybrid diesel engine technology.Finally I’ll finish this, referring to the last part of the press conference ;
“ ….We have been doing our best to solve this dispute with the principle of peaceful settlement with dialogue. Nevertheless, if this kind of brutal, deadly repression continues, we openly declare our resolute will to fight to the death..
Those of us in here will show our determination to die to the world not only as workers but also as human beings.
We will fight unflinchingly and regain our rights and return to our homes at last.
In the daily fighting from July 20 to July 27, the police, thugs and scabs had recaptured the entire plant with the exception of the paint department. Large contingents of police massed in the building next door, a few yards from the paint department entrance.
After renewed negotiations broke down again over the weekend of Aug. 1-2, electricity to the paint department was finally cut off, forcing the occupying workers to use candlelight at night. The final battle began on Aug. 3 and continued through the 5th.
100 strikers had left the occupation throughout the night (many out of disgust at the ruthlessness of the state and company’s violence). In the final negotiations, the local union president agreed to early retirement (i.e. layoff with severance pay) for 52% of the occupiers, with 48% furlough for one year without pay, after which they will be rehired, economic conditions permitting. The company will also pay a 550,000 won monthly subsidy for one year to some workers transferred to sales positions.
In the ensuing days, insult was piled on injury with detention and pending indictments of scores of workers, and a 500,000,000 won ($45,000,000 US) lawsuit by the company against the KMWU. As indicated, further individual lawsuits, possible under Korean labor law which have left striking workers destitute in the past, may follow. The company claims 316 billion won ($258.6 million) damages and about 14,600 vehicles in lost production due to the strike.
This calculated vengeance by the government and the company shows a clear escalation of a general offensive against all possible opposition. A year before, in summer 2008, the 12-month strike at the E-Land department stores went down to defeat. Of the 10,000 employees who had struck in summer 2007, many returned to their jobs, accepting the miserable offer they had initially rejected, Others had already moved on to other jobs. The E-Land employees had repeatedly sat in and occupied stores, and on several occasions fought off police and thugs attempting to escort strikebreakers into stores. Nevertheless, following the defeat, nothing like the reprisals coming down on the Ssangyong workers occurred.
The Lee Myong Bak government of the Hanaradang Party has important roots in the 1961-1979 dictatorship of Park Chung-hee, which were the glory years of Korea’s emergence as the first Asian tiger. Park’s daughter was only narrowly edged out by Lee to become the party’s presidential candidate in 2007. More broadly, a rose-tinted view of the Park dictatorship, focused on its economic dynamism and downplaying or ignoring its brutal repression, has become widespread in Korean society in recent years, fueled by the spotty growth since the early 1990’s and above all since the 1997-98 financial meltdown when Korea came under the control of the IMF. (One of the IMF’s main conditions for its $57 billion bailout was a major increase in the casualization of workers.) The Lee government not only repealed a tax on luxury real estate transactions imposed by the previous Noh government, but it refunded the tax money collected in those years. During the Ssangyong strike, it also pushed through a much-contested media law, which will allow a Rupert Murdoch-type consolidation of the media by a few large conglomerates, wiping out smaller and more critical outlets. Korea’s notorious National Security Law, passed in 1948 during the civil war preceding the Korean War during which hundreds of thousands of leftists were killed, remains in force and has been recently used to arrest socialist groups for the simple fact of being socialist, as well as book dealers selling ostensibly pro-North Korean books.
The Ssangyong defeat cannot be attributed merely to the lame role of the KMWU national organization, which from the beginning allowed the negotiations to be channeled in a narrow focus on “no layoffs”. (By contrast, the local union president, who ultimately signed the surrender document, stayed in the occupied plant right to the end, even though he was not on the layoff list.) Nor can the defeat be fully explained by the atmosphere of economic crisis. Both of these factors undoubtedly played a major role. But above and beyond their undeniable impact, it is the year-in, year-out rollback of the Korean working class, above all through casualization, which now affects more than 50% of the work force. 1 Thousands of workers from nearby plant did repeatedly aid the Ssangyong strike, but it was not enough. The defeat of the Ssangyong strikers, despite their heroism and tenacity, will only deepen the reigning demoralization until a strategy is developed that can mobilize sufficiently broad layers of support, not merely to fight these defensive battles but to go on the offensive.
- 1. Cf. my article “The Korean Working Class:
From Mass Strike to Casualization and Retreat, 1987-2007” – http://libcom.org/history/korean-working-class-mass-strike-casualization-retreat-1987-2007
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Protests in China over pollution
Posted by APOC-Philly in General on August 12, 2009
Authorities closed a chemical plant after local residents in central Hunan Province protested against cadmium pollution, which killed two people and affected hundreds of others, media reported on Monday, 3rd of August.
The closure follows a number of recent high profile “mass incidents” which turned violent and prompted media criticism of officials’ failure to respond quickly.
Two villagers near the Xianghe Chemical Factory, which had produced zinc sulfate for six years, died in May and June. Autopsies found high levels of cadmium in their bodies, the semi-official China News Agency said.
Tests conducted after their deaths found that over 500 out of nearly 3,000 local residents also had elevated levels of cadmium in their urine, it added. Around 30 people were admitted to hospital after checkups, Hong Kong media reported.
1,000 joined protest
About 1,000 villagers near the plant, located near Liuyang city of Hunan province, protested last week seeking closure of the plant. Residents of the town of Zhentou in Hunan province demonstrated outside local government headquarters and a police station, demanding greater compensation for pollution from the Xianhe Chemical Plant, protesters said.
The protesters also said they came out to reject recent government health checks conducted on locals that officials claimed showed the situation was not serious, said a resident who gave only his surname, Chen.
“More than 1,000 people came out over the past two days. We do not believe the government health check reports. Also, the compensation they are offering is too low and the soil is already polluted,” he told media by phone.
Arrests
Six villagers were arrested during the protest on Wednesday, including one who was badly beaten by police, Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing Ta Kung Pao newspaper reported. Thursday’s protesters also demanded their release, Chen said.
A female official reached by phone at Zhentou government headquarters defended the steps taken by authorities.
“We have already done a lot of work on the pollution issue and announced compensation, but some people do not accept it,” said the woman, who gave only her surname, Luo. “Instead, they spread rumours and inflate the problem. We do not know what they are up to.”
A local villager who also gave his surname as Luo told media his family of five had received 5,000 yuan (735 US dollars) in compensation.
“That is too low. We demand that the government move us to a safer location,” he said.
Following their protest, the plant was closed “forever”, the directors detained and the head of the municipal Environment Protection Bureau sacked, the China News Agency reported.
Hunan province has tended to be tougher on plants that pollute the Xiang River, on which the provincial capital, Changsha, depends for its drinking water. The provincial people’s congress requires annual reports on water quality, in another sign of the local representatives’ concern.
An environmental official admitted to heavy pollution of non-ferrous metals in the Xiang river, the financial magazine Caijing reported. The illegal extraction of non-ferrous metals in the region has increased in recent years due to corruption, and hundreds of extraction plants are now discharging untreated chemical-laced sewage into the river, Caijing added. Vegetables grown along the river have also been found to contain high levels of cadmium, mercury and lead.
State-run Xinhua news agency quoted Hunan officials saying the plant had been plagued by environmental problems since opening in 2004. These included releasing large amounts of highly toxic heavy metals such as cadmium into the local environment. The plant was ordered to close in March of this year, it said.
Rapid economic growth in recent decades and routine flouting of rules have taken their toll on China’s environment, say activists. China sees tens of thousands of public protests each year, many tied to anger over polluting industries.
Town hall in Sichuan stormed
Meanwhile in the Southwest Province of Sichuan, the same human rights monitor reports that on the evening of 14 July a thousand parents stormed the town government building in Jiusicheng Town, smashing office appliances, beating the town head. In the clash with police that followed 10 were wounded.
They were angry because personnel of the “Chengdu Yizhi Research Institute for Intellectual Development” used the same needle to draw blood for testing the “blood lead” levels of 600 children, one of whom was an AIDS carrier, in a cooperative campaign with the government.
There are an increasing number of children in China with an excessively high lead level in blood because pollution is getting worse there. Since excessively high blood lead adversely affects intelligence, various medical institutions have thought of making money through blood lead examinations.
By the small hours of 15 July, Xingwen County sent in 100 public security officers to prevent possible actions by the villagers to set the town government building on fire, etc. The public security officers clashed with the parents, wounding 10 of them. By the morning some of the parents were still demonstrating.
The Xingwen County Hospital then dispatched 10 doctors to do blood tests on the 600 children to determine whether or not they have been infected with the AIDS virus. Five personnel of the institute were already put under criminal detention.
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Korean Sanggyong Strike Up Against the Wall
Posted by APOC-Philly in Uncategorized on July 21, 2009
Submitted by catch on Jul 17 2009
The Ssangyong Motors strike in Pyeongtaek, South Korea (near Seoul), is now in its eighth week, and the situation of the strikers is increasingly dire.
Loren Goldner
July 17
(The following article reports “just the facts”, based on communications from workers and other activists involved in the struggle.)
The Ssangyong Motors strike in Pyeongtaek, South Korea (near Seoul), is now in its eighth week, and the situation of the strikers is increasingly dire.
To briefly reiterate the overall situation (following on my earlier report of June 19):
Ssangyong Motors is 51% owned by China’s Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation. In February the company filed for bankruptcy, proposing a restructuring and offering the Pyeongtaek plant as collateral for further loans to re-emerge from bankruptcy. The court approved the bankruptcy plan, pending adequate layoffs to make the company profitable again.
Following job actions through the spring in anticipation of the layoffs, the current strike began on May 27 when the company announced layoffs and forced retirement of 1700 out of 7000 workers, with immediate additional firings of 300 casuals. The workers slated for layoff immediately occupied the plant, demanding no layoffs, no casualization and no outsourcing. The KMWU (Korean Metal Workers Union) supported the occupation but tried to channel negations strictly around the question of layoffs.
As of mid-June, about 1000 workers were continuing the occupation, with wives and families providing food. The government and the company bided their time, in part because of a broader political crisis of the hard-right Lee government which militated against any immediate massive police and thug attack, But two weeks later, they felt confident to go on the offensive. The workers, for their part, had armed themselves with iron crowbars and Molotov cocktails.
On June 26th-27th a serious government and employer attack began , as hired thugs, scabs recruited from the workers not slated for firing, and riot police tried to enter the factory. They secured the main building after violent fighting in which many people were injured. The occupying workers retreated to the paint sector, which was part of a defensive plan based on the belief that police would not fire tear gas canisters into the highly flammable area. (In January, five people in Seoul died in another fire set off during a confrontation with police, sparking weeks of outrage.).
The following day, the company issued a statement to the effect that there had been enough violence, but in reality in recognition of the tenacious worker resistance, and police and thugs were withdrawn. The company urged the government to involve itself directly in negations. All water in the plant was nonetheless cut off at the end of June.
Following a court order, the forces of repression struck again on July 11 as the riot police moved to seize the factory area with the exception of the paint sector, and encircled the entire factory.
Ever since the attack of the 26th-27th attack aimed at isolating Ssangyong’s struggle and breaking the strike, solidarity actions outside the plant were attempting to build broader support. These included a street campaign, mainly from family organizations in the center of Seoul and Pyeongtaek areas, a 4-hour general strike by the KMWU during which metal workers from nearby plants rallied in front of Ssangyong factory gate; on July 4th , and July 11 the KCTU (Korean Confederation of Trade Unions) held nationwide labor rallies in support of the Ssangyong’s struggle. These actions were however poorly attended and the leadership of the KMWU has hesitated in declaring an all-out strike in response to the attacks on the plant. Activists think the KMWU and KCTU leaderships are more preoccupied with upcoming union elections. (927 activists also held a one –day hunger strike in the center of Seoul on July 11.) (From my experience in Korea over the past four years, these are largely ritual actions which rarely influence the outcome of a struggle.)
Finally, on July 16, 3,000 KMWU members gathered to support the Ssangyong strike in front of the Pyeongtaek City Hall. When they tried to move to the factory after the rally, they were blocked by police and 82 workers were arrested on the spot.
All in all, chances for a serious generalization of the struggle to other factories look remote. Activists on the scene feel that even if the KMWU called a general strike, only a few districts would follow it. The Hyundai auto workers are in the midst of wage negotiations themselves. Nearby supplier plants have already gone through structural adjustment and are not likely to mobilize.
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Strikes and Lockouts in South Korea
Posted by APOC-Philly in General on June 3, 2009
Submitted by Ed on Jun 1 2009
As the economic recession hits South Korea, striking car workers have been locked out of their factory while earlier in the week construction workers go on strike in and around Seoul.
Ssangyong Motor Company has locked striking workers out of its plant to stop them disrupting production at the carmaker, which is in bankruptcy protection.
Unionised workers at the South Korean automaker have been on strike since May 21, demanding management keep the assembly line workforce at current levels in a self-rescue plan the company is devising under a court order.
The carmaker’s management said in a statement it had to impose the lockout after unionised workers began an illegal sit-in and blocked managers from going to work.
Ssangyong management has called for more than 2,600 workers to be laid off (36% of its workforce), triggering protests from the workers. The labor union has called for the government’s financial assistance to prevent massive layoffs amid the economic meltdown and help resuscitate the automaker by enlarging its market share. The company is 51-percent owned by China’s top automaker, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp., which has balked at providing more support.
Construction workers strike
The Korean Construction Workers Union staged a strike earlier this week and held several rallies in and around Seoul and, according to some sources, has made progress on working conditions with the Land Ministry.
The union, which represents 25,000 workers across the country, held morning rallies in Daebang-dong, southwestern Seoul, and Samseong-dong, southern Seoul, that drew roughly 4,000 workers in total. Nearly 20,000 workers gathered in front of the government complex in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi, for an afternoon demonstration (pictured above).
The union said it scheduled the strike in Seoul after it failed to reach an agreement on working conditions with the government on Tuesday. But the two sides were able to hammer out a partial agreement that covered a key union demand relating to the use of non-union workers on construction sites, according to a press release issued yesterday by the ministry.
The union claims that the government is increasingly using outside workers and contractors on construction projects, diminishing opportunities for union members. It also wants the government to provide guaranteed labor rights for so-called special workers – mainly those who are self-employed.
Additionally, the construction workers union wants help combating unemployment related to the economic downturn.
Oh I-taek, a senior executive of the construction union, said that union members now account for just 30 percent of all construction workers on construction sites.
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Dying for Democracy: Tiananmen Square, Remembered
Posted by APOC-Philly in General on June 3, 2009
Twenty years ago, a peaceful student protest in China’s capital sparked a massacre that was broadcast across the globe. But did it really change anything? Eyewitness Mary Dejevsky looks back.
The Western world had been on “death watch” for weeks, preparing for the demise of Ayatollah Khomeini, inspiration of Iran’s Islamic revolution. But history has a way of frustrating even the best laid plans. And when Iran’s supreme leader eventually breathed his last, the news was utterly, and brutally, eclipsed: the Chinese army had mounted an all-out assault on the ceremonial heart of Beijing, ruthlessly evicting student protesters from Tiananmen Square, and reimposing communist rule in a ferocious exercise of force.
It was the night of 3 June, 1989. It was only an hour after night descended that the first tanks rolled down Chang’an avenue, the first bullets began to fly and the first bloodied casualties were delivered on wooden carts to the city’s hospitals.
I should have been there. As it was, I switched on the television in the comfort of a Hong Kong hotel room to see footage of burning military hardware, forlorn heaps of crushed bicycles and panicked witnesses describing dodged bullets, looming tank tracks and indiscriminate human carnage. Improbably, so it seemed, the dateline read “Beijing”. Outside my window what seemed like all Hong Kong was coming on to the streets for a “white march” of mourning, in which extreme fear and anger prevailed. With Beijing now in thrall to the military, emotion ran nowhere higher than in this British colony, which faced transfer to Chinese sovereignty in eight years’ time.
Two days later, in a classic example of cowed officialdom sticking to old rules until new ones are received, I was back in Beijing on a new visa, obtained – as in the past – via the services of the hotel concierge. At Beijing airport, the young military officers seemed almost relieved to see the tiny band of passengers from our nigh-empty jumbo. And you could see why. The departures area and the precincts were a seething mass of Western humanity, like something out of a Second World War film, except wealthier and more summery.
The Beijing I had landed in could not have been more different from the one I had left only a couple of days before. Saturday afternoon had been sunny, cheerful and joyously anarchic. The vast expanse of Tiananmen Square thronged with activity, as it had done for a good month. Here was an alternative city, of tent-houses, tent-cafes, tent-streets. At one time there had been informal first-aid stations where hunger-strikers, with their white head-bands, were ministered to by concerned fellow-students. There was spontaneous music-making and earnest philosophising. Tannoys relayed the fierce oratory of youthful idealism; rival quotations from Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping were parsed for hidden meaning.
On my return, the weather was dismal; and the closer to the city outskirts we came, the more agitated my taxi driver grew. The whole of the centre was out of bounds, barricaded by troops; tanks and armoured personnel carriers guarded bridges and intersections. Elsewhere all was emptiness and quiet, where bustle, noise and life had been before.
In the foreign community that evening there was near-panic. Those relatively unfazed by the military assault had their resolve shattered when troops fired, apparently in error, and glanced one of their residential compounds. The mass exodus to the airport I had seen was the response. And the sense of menace was reinforced by ghosts crowding in from the past. Westerners and their “decadence” had been targeted during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. But it was knowledge of the violent Boxer uprising of 1898-1901 against foreign ownership and influence that cast the longer shadow. The market reforms instituted by Deng Xiaoping, were still at an early stage; they had brought not only higher living standards, but resentment, too – resentment that a paranoid regime could be tempted to divert on to foreigners.
The authorities had no need to extend their crackdown. The regime had planned its assault, applied massive force, and annihilated this challenge to its rule in a matter of hours. In so doing, it effectively eradicated open dissent for at least a generation.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to conclude that the student protests of 20 years ago were doomed; easy, too, to chart how the movement progressively sowed the seeds of its own downfall. Its young leaders were arrogant, increasingly demagogic, and poorly organised. Their calls for democracy in China were not only unrealistic, but in many ways derivative and naïve. It is remarkable that the protest grew to the point where it was seen as a serious threat to Communist Party rule.
That it did so reflects an extraordinary, and completely unforeseeable convergence of circumstances: historical precedents that spooked the authorities; weak leadership at the top of the Chinese Communist Party and government, and a series of unrelated events that no contingency planners could ever have foreseen.
The protests began with the death in April that year of Hu Yaobang, a former head of the Chinese Communist Party who had been purged from the leadership as too reform-minded – the very trait which earned him a following among students and intellectuals. After his death, more than 50,000 mainly young people marched to Tiananmen Square in his memory, to protest at what they saw as the disgracefully low-key funeral organised by the state.
Demonstrations continued into May, when they merged with ceremonies to mark the 70th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement – an expression of intellectual discontent that swept China as students returned from Europe at the end of the First World War. From that anniversary, it was a mere matter of days before the Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev, was due for a full state visit to China.
This was no routine visit. For Gorbachev and his reformist allies in the Soviet leadership, it was intended to consolidate his uncertain authority at home, while also marking the reconciliation of international communism after the Sino-Soviet split of the early 1970s. That was the significance of the visit at state and party level.
But China’s rebellious students sensed that there was an opportunity for them, too. Gorbachev was presiding over an unprecedented thaw in political, intellectual and economic life in the Soviet Union. Non-communists were being encouraged to participate in state bodies, and censorship was in retreat. Many of the students who had flocked to Hu Yaobang’s funeral and then celebrated the May Fourth Movement declared a hunger strike and vowed to stay in Tiananmen Square until the Communist Party granted political reforms. They hailed Gorbachev as their ally.
The Soviet President received an ecstatic reception; on the second day of Gorbachev’s visit, 1 million people massed in Tiananmen Square. The Chinese authorities understood that the enthusiasm on the streets for Gorbachev was simultaneously a protest against them and whole cities were paralysed. But they could do nothing about it without risking even greater disorder, even bloodshed, in the presence of a foreign leader. They held back. And in so doing, they exposed a truth common to every revolution. At some undefined point, fear had changed sides.
Ridiculing all official appeals to leave the streets, student activists were dispatching envoys across the country, fomenting protests in universities and trying to muster support for their cause in factories and farms. Their efforts to recruit workers and peasants to their revolution were not especially successful, but as police left their posts in Beijing to join the marchers, red signals were routinely ignored, and groups of euphoric students on flat-bed trucks took over the capital’s streets by night, the spectre was raised of a breakdown of all law and order.
Such fears were not irrational. Beijing with no police or public transport and as many as 2 million people milling, unmarshalled, on the streets was a frightening and at times intimidating place to be. But, as contradictory editorials appeared in official newspapers, it was apparent that the regime was as paralysed as the country’s major cities.
With Gorbachev gone, Prime Minister Li Peng acted. After failing to agree any compromise with the student leaders, Li declared martial law. It was the evening of 19 May. The protesters on Tiananmen Square had been alerted by loudspeaker to stand by for a special announcement. Li’s declaration was relayed across the silent encampment.
The tension was palpable, and followed by confusion among the students about what to do; but the confusion was not only theirs. Around midnight, the Communist Party leader, Zhao Ziyang, came into the square in person with the offer of a last-minute compromise. His intervention failed; the protest continued. He did not appear in public again; three weeks later he was removed.
It might have been expected that the imposition of martial law in a country with a monopoly party in power would be instantaneous and definite. At the outset, though, it seemed half-hearted; the dawn to dusk curfew was enforced patchily. Few troops were initially to be seen, though reports of night-time advances into the city outskirts multiplied. Residents constructed elaborate barricades to impede the advance.
The Tiananmen Square camp thinned out, but remained stubbornly, squalidly, in place. As the days passed, it was noticeable how much more khaki there was about town; khaki jeeps, khaki uniforms, groups of khaki clad officers in restaurants. But nothing actually happened.
Then early one morning, I opened the curtains of my room to see scores of pitifully young soldiers encamped on the grass verge of the dual carriageway below. They had backpacks, but appeared unarmed. Half an hour later they were picked up in fleets of buses and gone. As late as the afternoon before the night-time assault, martial law had an unreal, ephemeral character. The thundering tank assault on Tiananmen Square shattered that consoling illusion.
To this day there is still no accepted death toll. The Chinese authorities insist that fewer than 250 people died; others cite figures into several thousand. Certainly, some – perhaps many – escaped, including the two charismatic student leaders, Wang Dan and Chai Ling, who were smuggled out of the country. An unknown number may also have fled into the protection of friends and family, picking up their pre-rebel lives where they left off. Tiananmen Square was written out of China’s official history as soon as it happened, the numbers are in such doubt not only because the dead cannot speak, but because the living are still reluctant to admit they were there.
Twenty years on, a whole generation of Chinese has watched the country be changed – and changed radically – from the top down, while still waiting for the chance to influence politics from the bottom up. Nor were the international consequences of Tiananmen Square long-lasting. The Western world’s cold shoulder and the upsurge of resistance in Hong Kong to being reincorporated into China had little effect. Like it or not, China’s potential economic might handed its rulers a free moral pass, and still does.
It’s not uncommon now to hear Tiananmen Square described as an “incident”. Perhaps that is how this military assault by a frightened one-party regime on its rising intellectual elite is slipping into history. But this is a travesty. To belittle what happened at Tiananmen Square is to ignore something everyone needs to know about China.
Taking a stand – Student protest through the years
Peking, 4 May 1919
During the First World War, China supported the Allies on condition that Germany’s control of the Shandong peninsula would be returned to China; it had been ceded to Germany by an earlier government, in return for financial support. At the Paris peace conference in April 1919, however, the drafted Treaty of Versailles gave Japan the rights to Shandong instead. Chinese protests were brushed aside.
On 4 May, students from 13 universities met to plan how to raise awareness of the government’s spinelessness. Later, 3000 Peking University students demonstrated in Tianenmen Square: they protested that the Allies had betrayed China and that the government did nothing to promote Chinese interests. They called for a boycott of Japanese goods and the resignation of three officials at the Paris talks. Many students were assaulted and arrested. The next day, students across the country took to the streets, joined by workers and businessmen. As strikes spread, the economy broke down. The government had to release the arrested students and sack the three officials. In Paris, the Chinese delegate refused to sign the treaty.
The “May Fourth Movement” became a rallying-cry for Chinese nationalism, a triumph for popular feeling. And why were the Chinese so keen to win back the Shandong peninsula? Because it was the birthplace of Confucius.
Budapest, 1956
After Stalin died in 1953, most European Communist parties began shyly considering political reform. Imre Nagy encouraged his countrymen to imagine Hungary becoming a neutral country, rather than a Soviet satellite. In July 1956, students began holding forums to discuss Hungary’s future. On 23 October 1956, 20,000 demonstrators gathered to in solidarity with Polish reformers. The banned national anthem was sung, the Communist insignia cut from the Hungarian flag and by the time the crowd reached the Parliament building, it numbered 200,000. Some students went into the Radio Budapest building to broadcast their manifesto, but were stopped by the AVH police; when the crowd demanded their release, the police fired on them, killing several.
Mayhem ensued. Police vans were torched, symbols of the Communist regime vandalised and violence spread across the city. Students attacked police and Soviet troops. A new government pledged to set up free elections. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. The Soviet Union pledged to withdraw its forces…
But the dream couldn’t last. On 4 November, Soviet tanks moved into Budapest. 2,500 Hungarians were killed, and 200,000 fled. By 10 November, a Soviet-run government had crushed all opposition.
Paris, 1968
The greatest national strike ever to paralyse a Western economy started when students at the University of Paris at Nanterre complained that the authorities banned mixed-sex sleeping quarters. But students and educators were already at serious loggerheads: in March, 150 students, poets, musicians and left-wing groups had occupied an admin building at Nanterre, the police had been summoned, but there was no trouble. Now, a disciplinary committee shut down the university. When students at the Sorbonne protested about the closure, police invaded. On 6 May, more than 20,000 students and teachers walked to the Sorbonne to remonstrate. When they arrived, baton-wielding riot police were waiting. The students retreated behind barricades and pulled up cobblestones to fling at the police, who responded with tear gas. Over the next two weeks, as street riots, burning cars and Molotov cocktails filled the world’s TV screens, support grew like a tidal wave. A million people marched through Paris on 13 May. Thousands went on strike. By the end of May, 10 million workers had downed tools. Fearing the worst, De Gaulle called an election in June – and, amazingly, his party won: it seemed that ordinary voters had by then had enough of ‘les evenements’.
Kent State University, Ohio, 1970
Incensed by Nixon’s planned invasion of Cambodia – an expansion of the Vietnam War – 500 students protested on Kent State campus on 1 May. Smashed cars and local store windows brought the police, and a state of emergency was declared. The National Guard arrived the next day to find the Reserve Officers Training Building ablaze. Ohio Governor Rhodes called the students “the worst type of people…the strongest well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America.”
By 4 May, things were at flashpoint. Seventy-seven National Guard troops with fixed bayonets tried to disperse the 2,000 students gathered on the campus. The students retreated and the Guardsmen, stranded on a sports field, were unsure how to proceed. Then at 12.22pm, they turned and fired their rifles at unarmed protesters more than 300 feet away: 67 bullets in 13 seconds. Four students died, nine were injured, one paralysed for life. Nobody knows why they fired, or if an order was given. The outcry was colossal. 450 campuses closed due to student action – the only nationwide student strike in US history. At NYU, a banner hung from a student building. It read: “They Can’t Kill Us All.”
Tehran, 1999 & 2006
It started when a newspaper called Salam (supporting the President, Mohammed Khatami) was closed by the Iranian judiciary. Students at Tehran University demonstrated peacefully against press censorship and in favour of Khatami. That evening, 400 “plainclothed paramilitaries” stormed the dormitory, kicked down doors, pulled women students’ hair and set fire to rooms.
Retaliation came next day, as unemployed youths joined students in Tehran to riot in the streets. They continued for five days, leaving the capital jammed with burnt-out buses and 17 students dead. Violent demonstrations broke out in Tabriz, Shiraz and Isfahan, where police entered the universities and attacked students. Outraged, some youths tried to storm the Ministry of the Interior. Their fury subsided when Khatami disowned them.
Quite a contrast with the day, in 2006, when students at the Amirkabir University of Technology interrupted a speech by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, torched his photograph, threw firecrackers and shouted “Death to the dictator!”. Rather than have them arrested or beheaded, the president said he had “a feeling of joy” because it showed what freedom his people enjoyed. Spin doctoring, Iran-style.
- JOHN WALSH
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First Mass Redundancies Announced in South Korea; Wokers Respond With Strike Action
Posted by APOC-Philly in General, Organizing on May 25, 2009
Submitted by Ed on May 25 2009
Workers at South Korean automaker Ssangyong Motor went on strike Thursday in protest at plans for mass layoffs to save the firm from bankruptcy.
Assembly lines at its plant in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul, stopped at 1:30pm, said union spokesman Lee Chang-Geun.
“Management should come to talk with the union on avoiding the proposed massive job cuts,” Lee said, adding that the duration of the strike would be decided Friday.
Debt-stricken Ssangyong in February won court protection from creditors. The court told its Chinese majority owner, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp (SAIC), to give up management control. Court-appointed managers have since struggled to turn the company around through job cuts and cost savings.
The programme calls for the sacking of 2,646 workers or 36 percent of the workforce, in what would be the country’s first mass layoffs since the onset of the global economic crisis in September. The programme also proposes the firm take out a new bank loan of 250 billion won (200 million dollars) by offering its factory as collateral.
Union leaders representing 7,100 workers immediately rejected the job cuts and demanded managers minimise sackings through job-sharing.
Ssangyong, which specialises in sport-utility vehicles and luxury sedans, posted a net loss of 709.7 billion won last year on sales of 2.5 trillion won. In the first three months of this year, its sales nosedived 76 percent to 6,471 units. SAIC still holds a 51 percent stake in the firm.
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