By Jonathan Singer
In the longest such dispute by an enterprise union in South Korea's history, a sit-in strike by members of the Sammi Specialty Steel Workers Union (SSSWU) has now past its 1100th day.
The dispute began when Pohang Steel Company (POSCO), in which the government has investments, engineered a "purchase and acquisition" of Sammi Specialty Steel. All of Sammi's factories, equipment and offices were sold to POSCO.
In a purchase and acquisition, the acquired goods must be used for another business purpose and the company is not obliged to retain the employees or their trade union. However, in POSCO's case the factories that were acquired perform exactly the same function and make the same products as before so the company should be obliged to continue the employment of the workers, and recognise the union and the collective bargaining agreement.
POSCO deliberately drafted the contract as a purchase and acquisition in order to dismiss the most active union members and get rid of the union. One hundred and eighty-five of the most active union members, including the union officers, were sacked.
POSCO has a long history of anti-union activity. In the late 1980s there was a drive by POSCO workers to form a union. By 1988, POSCO had as good as destroyed the union through various union-busting tactics, including dismissals.
Taking advantage of the ban on union plurality at the enterprise level, POSCO then formed a phantom union in order to prevent the registration of a new autonomous union at POSCO. The phantom union has 22 members in a workplace of 30,000 to 40,000 and is not affiliated to the metalworkers' federations of either of the two national centres in South Korea.
The company's union has never made a collective bargaining agreement which has advanced workers' interests and has readily agreeing to company proposals, including wage cuts.
In 1995, Sammi Speciality Steel workers concluded that the union operating in their workplace was pro-employer. They seceded from the Federation of Korean Trade Unions and affiliated to the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and initiated an internal union democratisation drive in the SSSWU.
If the SSSWU had continued after POSCO's takeover of Sammi, the company would have had to contend with not only that union but also a democratisation drive within the phantom union.
After examining the circumstances of the dismissal and the activities of the acquired Sammi Specialty Steel units, the Regional Labor Court ruled that POSCO's dismissal of the 185 workers was unfair and ordered their reinstatement. POSCO appealed to the Central Labor Court which, on December 17, 1997, upheld the reinstatement order.
POSCO has yet to comply. KCTU leaders took the SSSWU case to President Kim Dae Jung on April 22, 1998. Kim promised to ensure enforcement of the CLC ruling immediately. On May 11, 1998, the National Audit Board also examined the POSCO/Sammi case and concluded that it was clearly a business transfer, not a purchase and acquisition.
The KCTU has also raised the SSSWU issue in the second Tripartite Commission, resulting in a commission statement demanding that POSCO issue employment guarantees for the dismissed workers. Nevertheless, POSCO management refuses to budge — and the workers' strike continues.
[Based on information supplied by the South Korean radical organisation Power of the Working Class.]