Vol. 79/No. 45 December 14, 2015
SKorea: 100,000 protest attacks on workers’ rights
In the biggest labor demonstration in seven years, more than 100,000 workers, farmers, students and others marched and rallied in Seoul Nov. 14. “The government is pushing ahead with the labor reform bill which would make it easier for the employers to fire workers, cut wages and expand the number of temporary workers,” Mikyung Ryu, international director of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, which initiated the action, said by phone from Seoul Nov. 24.
Stopping the proposed labor-law “reform” was one of the central demands of the protest.
Some one-third of workers in South Korea are temporary with hourly wages that are just 54 percent of what permanent workers receive, and that percentage is falling.
Protesters assembled throughout Seoul and converged near City Hall. Some 22,000 police set up barricades made up of 700 buses and doused demonstrators with water cannons and tear gas to prevent them from marching to the presidential offices.
Another key target was a new “official” textbook on Korean history that the government announced it has begun writing. The book would be required reading for all students.
“I will use correct history textbooks to unify the divide in public opinion,” President Park Geun-hye told the National Assembly Oct. 27. Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn said at a government briefing Nov. 3 that one widely read textbook has a “sneaky passage” that creates “the incorrect impression that North Korea might not have been to blame for” the 1950-53 Korean War.
More than 2,700 professors at 170 universities have opposed the plan.
One of the contingents attacked by the cops were farmers demanding relief for plummeting rice prices. Baek Nam-gi, a 69-year-old farmer, was seriously injured after being knocked down by the high-pressure water stream. Cops kept spraying him as fellow protesters dragged him to safety.
Farmers have been hard hit by Seoul’s participation in free trade agreements that benefit capitalist producers in the United States and China at the expense of South Koreans. “Only 5 percent of food consumed here is produced locally,” Ryu said.
Since winning the 2012 elections, Park has attacked the unions, restricted free speech and disbanded the Unified Progressive Party, which her government and national spy agency accuse of having ties to the North Korean government.
In October 2013 the Ministry of Employment and Labor stripped the Korean Teachers and Education Workers’ Union of its legal status because it allowed fired teachers to keep their union membership. In a victory for the union, the Seoul High Court suspended enforcement of the revocation Nov. 16. A final ruling is expected by January.
On Nov. 21 police raided eight offices of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions in Seoul and affiliated unions, confiscating files and other documents. The unionists “are suspected of leading the illegal, violent protest, and we will secure evidence to find those who orchestrated them,” a police official told Yonhap news agency.
“The violence at the Nov. 14 demonstration was all provoked by the government and the police,” Ryu said. “It was a peaceful action but the government is trying to give it a negative image. They are even trying to link us to Islamic State terror.”
Another nationwide strike is planned for later in December.
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On the Picket Line
Black Friday: Walmart workers demand $15 an hour
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