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2002-10-28 13:48:23, 조회 : 51 |
Prepared for conference on Feminist Perspectives on the Paradoxes of Globalization
November 5-6, 1999, Berlin
By Maria Rhie Chol Soon ,Chairperson of KWWAU
An abstract of my presentation:
The key effects issues and responses related to the global economy in the Asia region
In the past two decades the Asian economy has gone through an economic restructuring process in the light of its incorporation into the world economy. It is characterized by two ways: one the movement of capital from newly industrialized countries to developing countries provide land and abundant workers.
Second, the liberalization of national economy and the introduction of export-oriented industrialization in the less developed countries of Southeast and South Asia. Under the pressure of economic crisis in their own counties and the impact of WB-IMF policies open their economies and invite foreign capital to develop export-processing industries.
Women first Contributors of Globalization
Many of the young women recruited to work on what feminists have dubbed the “global assemblyline”. Employers lauded these women as supposedly nimble fingered with fine motor development suitable to detailed, boring, repetitive work, more pliable and controllable and less prone to labor organizing and activism. Whether married or single, these women were assumed to be secondary wage earners whose primary and ultimate function was marriage and motherhood, and who thus did not merit wages high enough to support families. The young women drawn into industrialization processes in the Third World since the late 1960s and 1970s were reminiscent of the factory.
In the 1970s to a combination of factors, such as a global economic recession, falling rates of profit, technological advances in communication and transport, and rising wages and social spending in developed countries based on concessions made to labor and social movements, etc., a number of corporations began to outsource and subcontract labor-intensive segments of their production processes overseas. The low-waged, highly exploited labor of young women workers, financed rapid industrialization in the “Four Tiger” countries of Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, and Taiwan, and the Mexico-US border. Corporations and governments used profits “sweated” out of these women workers to invest and diversify into heavy and financial industries, as foreign exchange for trade with other counties, to pay interest on debts to foreign banks, and to line the coffers of industrialists, bankers, financial speculators, and government bureaucrats. International financial institutions like the WB and IMF, and National governments lauded production for export as the model of development. Free enterprise Zones offering generous tax breaks to corporations, provided convenient energy sources and infrastructure, and a cheap, repressed workforce began spread to a number of countries throughout Southeast and South Asia.
Here it is important to note that women’s integration into the global assembly line and workforce was not limited to direct employment for big name corporations in Free Trade Zones. Women, including older and married women, also make up a proportion of workers subcontracted to medium and small companies, as well as to sweat shops, and other unregulated, unprotected sectors of the economy. Women also made up a large portion of the rural workforce, as well as migrant workers within and across borders in search of work.
Financial Crisis Intensifies Structural Adjustment Policies & Gender Discrimination
Companies have also used the current economic crisis as an excuse to lay off more workers, cut wages, force workers to work overtime, practice greater discrimination, and hire more temporary workers to increase profit margins. The financial crisis that swept across many Asian countries in 1997 accelerated the intensity of structural adjustment and gender-based discrimination. First, although women workers in the NICs had already experienced massive layoffs in the 1980s and early 1990s as their jobs fled to Southeast and South Asia and China. They were hit with a new round of layoffs once more with the financial crisis in 1997. In Korea the chaebol, or giant privately owned corporations, had recklessly borrowed money from abroad with government complicity.
In some cases families were driven to leave their children in orphanages in order for them to be fed. There were also cases of women dropping their children off at childcare centers, but never coming back for them. In Korea an estimated 3 million workers have lost their jobs. The number of women active in labor market dropped from 50% to 46% of march 1998, compared to the rate for men of 73.8%. According to government statistics there was an 8 to 9% increase in unemployment. Women are seen as only as secondary wage earners and thus, have not been prioritized to receive unemployment insurance or in re-employment policies. Women are expected to step back so those male breadwinners can get help first. There is some unemployment insurance available for those who worked for companies employing 30 people. However, since the majority of women work in establishments with less than 10 employees, they lack access to unemployment insurance. At the same time we have found so many women who are heads of the their families. Many married women have been forced to work because the husband’s salary was too low to survive. Salaries plunged an average of 30 to 40% since the onset of the IMF crisis, wreaking havoc on families. If the husband works as a day laborer in construction or for a small company, life is practically impossible. In many cases women are divorced, widowed, or have husbands who unable to work. According to official labor department statistics, some 20% of households are headed by women. But we believe that this number seriously undercounts the number of female- headed households.
Secondly, age discrimination against women is on the rise. Young women are favored for clerical and retail positions, while older women work in assembly and service jobs. As job competition has intensified, women who are thirty-five years and older have found it increasingly difficult to find work. Employers have become more choosy and discriminatory. Some older women have been dismissed from restaurant jobs and replaced by younger women. Yet older women have more family expenses to meet as their children group up and need to go to college. At the same time there is no social security, or old age benefits for the elderly in Korea.
Third, the government has changed the laws to increase labor flexibility and casualization as demanded by the IMF. Amazingly the number of temporary workers has jumped to two out of every three workers. The number of temporary agencies has increased. While some workers are going to these temp agencies in hopes of finding work, many are scrambling to find a job in any way that they can regardless of how low the wage, bad the working conditions and tenuous the job security. The government changed the law so that now there is no cap on the number of hours one should work a day. Thus, while 56 hours a week is the allowable standard, that amount may come from having no work at all one day and working 24 hours straight the next. Before the upsurge in the independent labor union movement in 1987, Korean corporations were notorious for forcing workers to endure the world’s longest work week. The general strike that brought millions of workers into the streets in February 1997 was waged and won the battle against government schemes to impose flexibilization and casualization on workers.
Organizing Women Workers & Solidarity Against Globalization &Restructuring
Layoffs, runaway companies, casualization and lack of corporate and government accountability have both made women, migrants and workers lives immeasurably more difficult, and at the same time raised the stakes in organizing workers in defend of their rights.
CAW is a regional network of women workers organizations that assists in consciousness raising among women workers, supports their efforts, facilitates networking and linkages among women workers and related groups within Asia and beyond, and acts as the regional platform for women workers in Asia. Many of CAW’s member participated in the Third women’s conference against APEC held in November 1998 in Malaysia. At the anti-APEC conference workers organizations criticized the negative impact of globalization on workers, especially women and migrant workers and called for an end to liberalization of capital within the Asia pacific region. They also called for campaigns upholding the rights of workers to freedom of association and the right to organize; the rights of workers to safe and secure employment without threats of company closures, layoffs, reduced hours and restructuring; and unconditional rights of workers the provision of essential services like health, housing, education and childcare. They also endorsed provision of information dissemination; assistance locally and nationally to share more organizing experiences, developing an ideological alternative to the neo-libral economic model; promotion of education for youth and workers for awareness of labor rights; and linking workers struggles domestically and internationally to promote this alternative agenda.
Especially in recent years, workers organizations in developing countries the NICs and rich countries have begun to work more closely together to demand corporate and governmental. Joint campaigns have been developed calling for corporate and government accountability via the development of codes of conduct for the transnational corporations, especially in the toy, garment, and athletic shoe industries. Of course, corporations and governments have tried their hardest to take the bite out of these codes, to drag their feet in their implementation, and to reduce them to mere public relations stunts. At the same time, workers and people’s organizations have used these codes as tactic for consciousness raising and education, to pressure for accountability and change, and to allow the women workers behind the labels to be more visible to the public. Another area of joint work has been the development of regional networks like ALARM which monitors corporate activity in the Asian region. ALARM acts as a rapid response network to focus timely solidarity for workers struggles in the form of letters, faxes, petitions, solidarity actions and the like. These activities become increasingly important as the governments seek to accelerate APEC and free trade at the expense of workers, migrants and women.
Finally, women workers and people’s organizations continue to share experiences and bolster each others’ local and regional organizing efforts. For example in the face of massive layoffs and the financial crisis, the KWWAU developed a campaign pressuring the government to develop gender sensitive policies to combat rampant discrimination against women in layoff and unemployment insurance policies. The campaign succeeded in winning a number of temporary jobs for skilled and unskilled women, changing the unemployment insurance law to include smaller establishments where many women work, and support to women searching for jobs. KWWAU coordinated with KCTU and FKTU women’s department in this campaign. KWWAU also organize exposure/exchange visitation with Asia countries specially where Korean capital move their capital to like Indonesia, Sri-lanka, Vietnam , Philippine and etc., to share our experiences on organizing and dismissal from plant closed, so that we could link solidarity among the women workers.
And on August 29, 1999, the first women workers’ union as a national unit was established. It has 7 branches in nationwide.
The population of women economic activity has gradually increased for the past ten years and the women workers have been brought to the first target of the labor market on its pliability. Women workers have been situated in the work post of irregular, daily based, dispatched, and the places where workers cannot get any legal protection. Particularly the economic crisis of IMF has worsened the employment situation of women workers to irregular posts, etc. under the name of restructuring. The rate of irregular work posts has increased to 70%. Regarding to the stabilization of women’s employment, the existing workers union hasn’t been very helpful. The rate of women union members has been dropped to 5.6%. No matter of yellow union member or real activists, the population of women union members in only 300 thousands of five million women workers. There have been urgent need to have a structure which can organize the women workers, who have been alienated from main labor stream due to the benefits of nation, capital, and men workers, understand, and speak for them. Therefore the KWTU has established.
Purpose to the establishment of KWTU
The reason for the difficulty to have a united power of women workers is caused by the employment structure of industrial based union. 89.5% of women workers are working in the workplace with less than 100 workers which cannot have union within workplace and majority of women workers are irregular workers who are not equipped to join union in accordance with the regulation. It is an actual movement to protect the rights of women workers which is manifested in the law. It can also make a good model of organizing un-organized workers, which is one of the main tasks of trade union movement in Korea.
Women’s trade union is sought for a model to organize mass women workers overcoming the activities of the existing trade unions in which women cannot actively participated due to the conservatism of men union leaders and men-focused operation of union. According to the research by Korean confederation of Trade Union and Federation of Korean Trade Union, the difficulties of women trade union members are men-focused operation of union, conservatism of men union leaders, and the difficulties to share their time for the house work loads. Women’s Union opts for the methodology to seek for the development and improvement of own dignity as a woman. Main activity is to improve unequal status of women in a society and workplace due to the difficulties of women; marriage, giving a birth, etc. Therefore the activities of KWTU is much wider than the existing trade union which is working mainly through the labor management negotiation. Aside from the negotiation work between labor and management, KWTU is going to provide various activities of job arrangements, vocational training, life support, family camp for children care, etc. The problems of women workers can be solved out only through women workers themselves by organizing themselves in order to struggle for their needs.
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