Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
This section contains articles on the trade union mouvement and labor struggles as well as more general articles on the labor, people’s movements and the Left. Specific articles on the antiwar, peasant, etc., movements or the Left parties are posted in other sections.
Korean trade union leader Kim Jin-suk battles COVID-19, winter, and breast cancer to send a message to profit-making corporations—and keep the promsie of Korea’s pro-democracy movement alive.
Amidst heightened social restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic and bracing the punishing winter (...)
In the past decade, South Korea has emerged as one of East Asia’s most advanced digital economies, with e-commerce, ride-hailing, and other services all growing. But for many truckers and logistics transportation workers, without which these services wouldn’t be possible, the benefits have been (...)
South Korean labor activist Kim Jin-suk inspired her country back in 2011 by occupying the top of a 115-foot shipyard crane to protest worker layoffs and defend workers’ rights. Now, as she fights for her life against breast cancer, she’s demanding her job back.
A welder from South Korea is (...)
Act NOW! A LabourStart campaign in partnership with the International Transport Workers Federation and the Korean Public Service and Transport Workers’ Union (KPTU).
In South Korea, 1,000 people die annually due to truck crashes because big corporations like Samsung and Hyundai force low rates (...)
작성일2019-11-28
On 26 November, thousands of truck drivers in South Korea rallied in front of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (Molit). Their single demand was that the Korean government and large corporations recognise the relationship between a fragmented market, low transport (...)
Following the strike in Seoul Metro Line 9 last week, Korea Railroad Corporation (Korail) workers - members of the KPTU-Korean Railway Workers Union (KRWU) -are on a 72 hour strike from October 11 to October 14. The main demands in this strike are for an increase in safety-related staff, (...)
It is Now Our Duty to Carry Out the Tasks Left to us by Kim Yong-gyun
KPTU statement on the measures announced by the South Korean government and ruling party (Feb. 5) in relation to the death of Kim Yong-gyun
58 days have passed since precariously-employed young worker Kim Yong-gyun died, (...)
Kim Yong-gyun, a 24-year-old subcontracted worker was killed after getting stuck in a coal conveyer belt at the Taean Power Plant. Kim was working alone in the dark, doing extremely dangerous work. According to the occupational health and safety rules in the manual, Kim should have been working (...)
The following is an interview with Wolsan Liem of the Korean Public Service and Transport Workers’ Union (KPTU) about the strike, the current government’s labor policy, and the state of South Korea’s economy.
160,000 South Korean workers walked off the job last month to protest President Moon (...)
After 12 years of campaigns and protests against unjust layoffs, 180 female attendants at South Korea’s premier train service are getting their jobs back. These tenacious women workers defeated a ham-handed privatization effort and corrupt political collusion.
After 12 years of campaigning (...)
Sixteen hundred South Korean workers are on strike against SK Broadband as part of a struggle against irregular jobs and low wages. They demand job security, safe workplace and living wages.
After a four-hour blitz strike on June 28 that took management by surprise, SK Broadband workers pulled (...)
The labour rights organisation Supporters for the Health And Rights of People in the Semiconductor industry (SHARPS) ended their 1023 day sit-in after forcing Samsung to agree to third-party mediation. This mediation proposal was initially made more than 5 years ago. SHARPS began their sit-in (...)
The Sentro ng mga Nagkakaisa at Progresibong Manggagawa (SENTRO) send its heartfelt congratulations to Brother Han Sang-gyun, former President of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), for his release from prison last May 21. Together with KCTU we stand proud and happy regarding this (...)
KCTU warmly welcome the jailed Han, who is back to the movement as an organizer!
On May 21, KCTU ex-president Han, Sang-gyun will be freed on parole, after serving 2 years, 5 months and 12 days in prison on charge stemming from protesting the corrupt Park Geun-hye government. The new (...)
The author, Song, Ho-joon, is a railway worker who has participated in the Korean labor movement and railway workers’ organizing struggles for the last three decades. He has been imprisoned twice due to his involvement in railway workers’ strikes. In 2015, the union members of KCTU Seoul Region (...)
Contract workers at GM Korea were left out of negotiations with the company on wages as well as talks with the government on recapitalisation. Their story is another example of the lack of solidarity between permanent and contract workers in the same factory. Despite doing the same work as (...)
President introduces 52-hour work week to help improve quality of life and boost birth rates
Employees in one of the most overworked countries in Asia are about to get a break after South Korea passed a bill to reduce the typical work week in an effort to improve quality of life and boost (...)
Reversing a cost-and-risks transfer chain for working class power A Case Study of the Samsung electronic workers and the KMWU, by Aelim Yun
In the recent history of union activity in Korea, two episodes stand out, the first being when on the 8th of March 2011, visitors to three of the most (...)
Despite the low union density and various impediments to organizing precarious workers and bargaining collectively with user-enterprises, Korean unions have made progress in representing precarious workers and in increasing union presence in value chains since the 2000s.
Many legal systems such as that of Korea have a limited amount of regulatory interventions into a boundary of separate entities, and this had allowed the principal enterprise to transfer their liabilities to others (...)
Low-wage irregular workers in South Korea will launch a social general strike on June 30 to demand an increase in the minimum wage; reversal of former President Park Geun-hye’s regressive labor reforms; and an end to the country’s chaebol-centered economic system. Wol-san Liem discusses the aims (...)
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