Commerce
Home Page

Commerce
work in multinational
companies

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

Five years ago, this was the scene for the Football World Cup. Now, the Seoul World Cup Stadium witnesses another kind of struggle as low-paid and badly treated young women workers demand a decent deal for them and their families. E.Land, a Korean textile retailer, bought this hypermarket and a chain of others last year from French multinational Carrefour. Now, all employment guarantees demanded and received by Carrefour have been forgotten and E.Land has embarked on the worst kind of cost cutting at the expense of its workforce. We are indeed witnessing a corporate behaviour that carries all the signs of a speculative private equity takeover - and yes, Seoul's commercial property prices are indeed skyrocketing.

This former Carrefour hypermarket is situated at the lower levels of Seoul's gigantic World Cup Stadium. Now, the arena of the 2002 football world championships is experiencing another kind of drama as young shop workers occupy the store since last Tuesday.

It all started when Korean retailer E.Land began dismissing its so-called non-regular workers, announcing that 1,100 of them had to go. In this particular store, the workers' anger was further raised by a supervisor who said that they all will have to go and their union disappear, otherwise he himself will get fired.

So they decided to occupy the store, or to stage an in-house picket, as Korean unionists prefer to call it. Non-regular workers had tried this once before, in a large factory, but failed to get the support of their colleagues who were on regular contracts. Now it was different, all E.Land workers closed ranks behind their victimised colleagues, and did this very actively.

The entry doors to the World Cup Stadium Homever hypermarket are closed with heavy chains, except a narrow entrance where pickets stand on 24 hour guard. Inside, caddies block the shopping aisles and escalators have been closed up with garden furniture.

Picketing workers sleep between cashiers' terminals

Between and behind the cash terminals, the Homever workers have established themselves as comfortably as they now can, sleeping on thin mats or cardboard boxes. Outside the entrance, a tent has been raised, where fellow unionists prepare the meals and the teas for their colleagues inside.

After days of in-house picketing under difficult conditions, the young E.Land workers at Seoul's World Cup Stadium Homever store are as determined as ever. This is their struggle, for the necessities of life for them and their families. Also the public has seen this, and sympathies are very strongly with the workers and their union. Kim Kyoung-wook in the lower right corner of this picture told UNI's Jan Furstenborg how important international solidarity and support is for these workers, helping them to go through these difficult times.

The space outside the cash terminals is where things happen, and endless succession of speeches, music and dancing. Posters and wall newspapers are being produced in small groups and cultural activities are improvised. Mobile phones serve the important contacts to families and kids at home.

Outside, the riot police is waiting for instructions in their buses, steel mesh covering the windows. And inside as well, the workers say, where a large contingent of police is hidden from outside eyes.

Cash registers are now quiet and the picketing shop workers have established themselves for their struggle, as well as they can. They all hope for a solution which will take them back to work, but they are prepared to hold out as long as it takes.

Apparently, discussions are taking place between the E.Land management and KFSU, the workers' UNI-affiliated trade union. The company is indeed in a difficult position. The mass dismissals have backfired, E.Land comes out in  open contempt of a recent labour law which the government says is there to protect non-regular workers, and the labour tribunal has already declared several dismissals to be in violation of the take-over agreement with Carrefour.

The agreement text is clear: E.Land committed itself to keep all Carrefour workers who had a certain length of service behind them. This was in response of a UNI Commerce intervention on behalf of the Korean workers and their trade union, and this was also one of the reasons for Carrefour not selling out to notoriously anti-union Wal-Mart.

E.Land workers from all over Korea arrive in Seoul to support the struggle

E.Land workers and supporting trade unionists from all over Korea are now travelling to the Seoul World Cup Stadium store, to defend and protect the workers inside. They feel that the more they are, the less likely it is that the riot police will be deployed to end the struggle through strong arm tactics.

Inside, the young workers are determined to hold out. -But we did sleep a little uneasily last night, one of them commented when Jan Furstenborg of UNI Commerce visited them today, together with Jay Choi of UNI Asia and Pacific.

Kim Kyung-wook leads the striking workers, and an arrest warrant has been issued for him. Together with UNI APRO Korea representative Jay Choi, he negotiated a recognition agreement and then a collective agreement with Carrefour. At the Seoul World Cup Stadium Store today, Jay and Kim discussed how international UNI solidarity action could best be set up.

International support and solidarity is important for us and helps us to bring this struggle to a victorius end, says Kim Kyung-wook, who lead the recognition struggle of the Carrefour workers and now heads the E.Land workers' trade union.

UNI intervenes in support of the workers

UNI has once again intervened this morning with the Korean labour minister, asking for a government intervention to force the company to abide by labour legislation and respect the employment commitments which enabled it to buy the Carrefour hypermarkets last year. UNI affiliates have been asked to send messages of solidarity to the striking workers, and to communicate their disapproval to the E.Land management.