Landmark victory for precarious workers at Kiryung Electronics in Korea

KOREA: The Korean Metal Workers' Union (KMWU) secured a significant victory for precarious workers in Korea in an agreement reached with Kiryung Electronics on November 1, 2010.

The precariously employed women workers at Kiryung Electronics formed a union at the factory in July 2005. Then, on August 24, 2005, the KMWU members started a strike when the company failed to directly employ and instead sacked the illegal dispatch workers that the company claimed were sub-contracted.

In the agreement reached on November 1, the company promised to hire the remaining 10 union members on strike at Kiryung Electronics into permanent positions. Both sides have agreed to withdraw lawsuits filed on the case, with the workers ending their sit-down strike on the same day.

The agreement is particularly significant as it is the first time in Korea that an employer has agreed to directly hire dismissed irregular workers into permanent positions.

This is a second major victory for precarious workers and the KMWU this year, having pursued a strategy of organizing precarious workers over a number of years. Earlier, in July, the country's Supreme Court ruled in favour of an irregular worker at Hyundai Motors, who was dismissed in February 2005 for union-related activities while working for an in-house subcontractor at Hyundai's Ulsan factory since 2002.

The situation faced by the workers at Kiryung Electronics and the workers at the Hyundai Ulsan factory are included in a complaint that KMWU, KCTU and IMF lodged to the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association in 2006, documenting how illegal and disguised employment relationships are routinely used in Korea to prevent workers from forming unions and bargaining collectively, in violation of the ILO convention on freedom of association. The ILO gave recommendations in favour of the workers in 2008 and 2009 that so far have been ignored by the Korean government.