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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Dec. 28, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------Korean workers fight mass layoffs
By Deirdre Griswold
Workers in south Korea are fighting mass layoffs in industries owned or regulated by the government.
The 47,000 union members at Korea Telecom went on strike Dec. 18 over government plans to fully privatize the telephone industry and cut 3,000 jobs. The south Korean government currently owns 51 percent of Korea Telecom. The remainder is split between domestic and foreign investors.
During the 1997-1998 economic crisis, Korea Telecom laid off 12,000 workers. Other industries also laid off hundreds of thousands of workers.
Although the unions at first resisted the massive layoffs of that period, they eventually agreed to them under the threat that the economy would collapse without loans from the International Monetary Fund. The layoffs were part of the IMF's loan conditions.
Other sectors of the economy are also in turmoil because of aggressive downsizing by the liberal government of President Kim Dae-jung.
Bank workers are to launch a general strike on Dec. 22 in protest over a government-led reorganization of the banking industry that unions say will lead to branch closings and layoffs.
First to walk out will be employees of Kookmin Bank and Housing & Commercial Bank. These two firms are slated to merge soon in an agreement pushed by the government that unions say violates an accord reached on July 11.
On Dec. 28 workers at other banking houses will hit the bricks, for a total of 24,000 bank workers on the picket lines. The strike is being called by the Korea Financial Industry Union, an umbrella organization that encompasses 23 labor unions. KFIU leader Lee Yong-deuk says the strike will start as planned unless the government scraps the merger between Kookmin and H&CB.
This heightened class struggle takes place at the same time that the government of south Korea is in negotiations with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north over measures to expand contacts between the two sides of the divided nation. The south has been occupied by U.S. troops since World War II.
Under its hated National Security Laws, south Korea still forbids any travel to the socialist north without government authorization. On Dec. 9, several thousand workers and students held a rally in Seoul calling for an end to the repressive laws, which punish even the possession of Marxist literature with long prison terms.
The workers and students fought with riot police who tried to keep them bottled up in a park. They succeeded in marching through the downtown area.
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