Korean workers protest massive 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.

Source: Workers World newspaper, issue of Dec. 28

Scrooged again: big layoffs announced just before holidays

By Gary Wilson

Scrooge was an amateur compared to the bosses of the giant corporations in the United States.

Large-scale layoffs were announced all across the country in mid-December. Aetna and Gillette cut 5,000 and 2,700 workers respectively. Whirlpool recently announced 6,000 jobs would be cut.

Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been cut since Oct. 1. The cuts have been deepest in auto, retail, industrial goods and financial services, according to the job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

“It’s like, ‘Merry Christmas. You’re laid off,’” a worker at Gillette’s South Boston plant told the Associated Press.

While layoffs are accelerating, there are fewer new job openings of any kind. That will mean rising unemployment.

Steady decline in living standards

During much of the 1990s boom, there were a great many layoffs. However, there was not an equal increase in the unemployment rate. In fact, the unemployment rate declined.

That happened because the impact of the layoffs was softened by the new jobs that were available, mostly in the service industries. Unemployment may not have increased, but there was a steady decline in the general standard of living for the working class in the U.S., while the ruling class recorded unprecedented gains.

Most of the new jobs were at a lower rate of pay. Few included benefits like medical insurance.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, workers’ wages were substantially eroded during the Clinton years because most corporate employers cut or even completely eliminated health insurance and pensions.

The economic recession that is on the horizon or has already begun, depending on which capitalist economist you listen to, is the result of a capitalist crisis of overproduction. The business press calls it a “problem of overcapacity.”

No matter what it’s called, a crisis of overproduction or overcapacity almost always leads to higher unemployment as capitalists cut back or shut down production and layoff workers.

For the workers and their unions, the challenge is to find a way to protect jobs and workers’ job rights.

The bosses always blame layoffs on economic conditions or some other factor. No matter what is said and no matter what is blamed, the solution is always to cut back and layoff workers.

There is no reason that this solution has to be accepted.

Workers’ control could protect jobs

Advocates of workers’ control are proposing solutions that protect workers’ rights and jobs, while maintaining the productive capacity of every business.

Right now there are absolutely no restrictions to layoffs. Bosses can give almost any reason they want, or no reason at all, and eliminate a job. It doesn’t matter if a company has made record profits during the year. The boss can still say that the company is in trouble and jobs have to be cut.

It’s time to challenge this clear injustice. Workers should not have to leave the job without having a say in the decision. Workers have a right to their jobs, a right to protect the investment of their labor in the company.

Every company is built on the labor of the workers. That makes the workers the primary investors in the company. The workers should have all the rights of primary investors, including the right to take action to protect their investments, that is, their jobs.

In Detroit, where the Big Three auto companies are projecting layoffs and cutbacks, protecting jobs is quickly emerging as the number one issue for auto workers.

The Detroit A Job Is A Right Campaign, a group that has fought plant closings and layoffs since the mid-1980s, supports workers’ control to defend jobs.

Prevent illegal actions by bosses

At Daimler Chrysler, for example, says Jerry Goldberg of the campaign, “the workers must be independently represented in any government investigation of the Daimler buyout. In fact, the workers should be made the trustees to manage and control the company assets and stop Daimler’s plundering.”

What happens if the bosses attempt to shut down plants and cut jobs before any investigation is completed?

In that case, workers as the legal trustees of the company should be ready to take control of the plants and equipment to prevent any illegal action by the bosses. This may require that the workers stay in the plants and offices to protect their interests.

“Ultimately, only workers’ control can protect the jobs and interests of the DaimlerChrysler workers,” Goldberg said.

Source: Workers World: www.workers.org