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My name is Park, Hyeon-je,
I’m the local chair of KMWU – Hyundai Motors,
irregular workers local, Ulsan.
There are 8500 irregular workers at Hyundai.
There are 25,000 KMWU members in this factory, including white collar workers
but among them there are 20,000 workers working in assembly lines.
I think it’s for the cost.
When you compare the basic wage of the workers,
the irregular workers are
seventy per cent of the regular workers, but when you
include the overtime and holiday work premium and other benefits,
the income of the irregular workers is half of the regular workers.
And the irregular workers are doing 1.5 or 2 times what the regular workers do.
Actually Hyundai Motors is ignoring everything. So the irregular workers
who won the case in the Supreme Court are not able to work in this factory, and
there are many following rulings – the decision made by the Labour
Relations Commission – but every decision was ignored by Hyundai Motors.
Actually, the government is just looking
– holding their arms – and they said they hope this problem
is solved by bargaining between the company
and the trade union. They are not doing anything.
They are saying that Hyundai Motors
is doing their best to solve this problem, but
they didn’t accept
the Supreme Court decision, so they didn’t mention
the Supreme Court decision at the table.
We, the KMWU and especially the local of the Hyundai Motors
irregular workers have been responding by every means of ours,
including strike, and the KMWU organises
a lot of demonstrations and rallies on this issue.
In Korea, there are eight million precarious workers, not only in
the manufacturing sector but in other sectors, and the number
of precarious workers is expanding more and more.
So we believe that this is happening for more profit for the employers,
the companies. I believe that it is not a problem in Korea only.
Many workers in others countries are facing the same problems.
So I hope we strengthen our solidarity and unity among workers
in the world and make a world without precarious labour.
I hope that with the other workers around the world we can
achieve a decent society.
It’s so hard to live in Korea because it’s so conservative
– as a trade unionist – when you’re hoping
for a good country to live in,
to make it a good country to live in.