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Department store cashiers face riot police in struggle for Korea's working families

The E.Land labour conflict has been about much more than disagreements on a collective agreement or grievances by a trade union. This was an outright attack by a greedy employer on some of the country's most vulnerable working people. The young women and girls who saw no alternative but cry out their desperation at the in-house pickets knew that if they lose their employment, then everything falls in pieces around them. But E.Land showed no mercy, and with Christmas at the door those who had reached out in support of their friends and colleagues were coldly showed the door. Over thirty union activists lost their jobs and the meagre outcome that they had as part of Korea's huge population of non-regular workers.

When the E.Land labour conflict was getting really sour and ten union representatives were behind bars, Park Sung-soo just disappeared from sight. Now this self-proclaimed true believer is back and has just celebrated his company's Christmas by throwing out thirty of his workers, on the eve of the holiday season.

Park Sung-soo is indeed no Santa Claus and for his workers he is surely the black angel, having brought sorrow and devastation to hundreds of families. It is not just any labour conflict that is played out in Seoul, it is a social and human drama touching those who are already the most vulnerable.

It all started a year ago when a well-meaning coalition of politicians, employers and unions wanted to do something about the dire straits in which Korea's huge population of non-regular workers were living under. Well more than half of the labour force were stuck with lower wages and lesser rights than the others, hired and fired at the pleasure of their bosses. These were the people who had paid the price for the Korean tiger to emerge, but they had no part in sharing the fruits of the economic upswing.

Most employers quietly accepted that the time had come and proceeded to give their workers regular contracts. But not Park Sung-soo. His non-regular workers, most of whom were young women and girls, started to get messages in their mobile phones. The boss did not need them anymore.

Outsource them all so that you don't need to pay them....

Our Mr Park had apparently other thoughts. If all cashiers and other workers would be fired and rented back from an agency, then big money could be made. There would not be any need to regularise them after two years, to give them employment security, and to raise their wages considerably.

Mr Park and his company had one problem though, and that was inherited from Carrefour. When E.Land bought the chain of French hypermarkets, they inherited a collective agreement that had just been negotiated. This agreement gave the workers job security and ensured them that they would get regular jobs.

The really big problem was that the workers and their union would not just quietly accept what was coming their way. Suddenly there was an 'in-house picket' downstairs in the Seoul World Cup football stadium, in the old Carrefour hypermarket. Soon ten more stores were scenes for picketing, one of them for weeks.

Inside: A hundred frightened young women workers, and their union leader Kim Kyung-wook. Outside: thousands of riot police and our Mr Park's strike-breaker thugs. This standoff continued until Manchester United was to play against the Seoul footballer one night - in the morning the riot police went to attack and dragged the girls to police stations and jails around the capital.

Strange things started to happen...

Suddenly and mysteriously a strange collective agreement text appeared in a Korean version. Here, the job guarantees were practically absent, only touching a very small minority of the workers. When light was shed on this by UNI Commerce, the mystery text disappeared as fast as it had come, and since then nobody knows where it came from and how it had come about.

Also in E.Land stores strange things happened, if one believes local press reports in Seoul. Workers who were close to their regularisation time disappeared and re-appeared under other names. And were once again far from getting a secure job and a living wage.

And the negotiations? Well, some meetings took place, but the people who had the responsibility and power to do a deal were absent. Kim Kyung-wook was in jail, thrown there for disrupting Mr Park's business activities, and Park himself had disappeared as in thin air. Nasty rumours in the Korean capital said that he was hiding in a Los Angeles church.

At this stage UNI Commerce was in Seoul, to meet the unions, to visit the union reps in their jails, to talk with the government - and meet the employers. As any strike, this was now ripe and a solution was close. Indeed, the employers association and the union could agree on the collective agreement contents, the primary strife issue. So an end to the conflict seemed to be close.

They must be punished...

But this was Eland and Mr Park. So one mission still remained, that of crushing the union. Leaders must be punished and those who disrupted MR Pak's business through their strike should pay for it. So suddenly it had turned into a political campaign by the employers - or perhaps it had been one from the very beginning?

Quite clearly, Park was now biding his time. The right-wing Great National Party was on its way to a resounding election victory in December and it appears that E.Land though that this would just make all their troubles go away. That's why the boss could stay away from the parliament hearings where he had been summoned, and that's why no agreement was made.

And yes, the conservative election victory happened as previewed. This encouraged Mr Park and his E.Land, now was the time to rid themselves of union troublemakers. So thirty of them were thrown out and thirty families put out on the streets, at the eve of the holiday season.

So what remained? Picketing in the icy rain on the streets of Seoul when others were celebrating the New Year. Sitting on a traffic camera pole for day and weeks to shout out the desperation of the country's weakest workers.

This is the California lifestyle that Mr Park and his company is now so prod of in their new US Stores. WhoAYou is reaching out to the same people who are the victims of E.Land's attack on their jobs in Korea.

A strange Christmas story indeed, Mr Park. Did the dinner taste good?