|
IMF AND WOMEN WORKS
Young Ju Son(A Secretary General Seoul Women Workers Association)
These days, IMF is a very popular term amongst the Koreans. Almost everyone knows the meaning of the English term of IMF from a 5 year old boy who asked his father, Dad, did IMF take away your job ? to the mother asking her son, Has your company been affected by the IMF ? Most people have felt the impact of the IMF era.
Lately the topic of the IMF cannot be avoided due to the economic crisis which is felt in every circumstance. Surely those most victimized are workers and their families. An atmosphere affected by sudden unemployment and unjust firing causes an overflow of exploited laborer unjustified laborer.
Workers live in a fear of losing their job. The individuals who have lost their jobs must worry about how they will support their families. Daily newspapers tell stories of people who cannot afford their past lifestyles so they prefer to leave their homes, suicide, abandoning to their children, and other unfortunate solutions. In this present economic crisis, which has called for monetary relief, has made the situation of women workers have worsened and become even more terrifying.
The 'Working Women' is going to study on the situation for women workers and their employment conditions.
The onset of the IMF era and the subsequent sufferings of workers
- After the IMF decided to help to Korea, Korea was forced to reconsider the economy on a large scale and launched new policies such as retrenchment policy, the open door policy, big enterprises reformed their structure and market competition was strengthened and made more flexible.
Is the economic policy of the IMF, which is being backed by the U.S. the perfect recipe for the economic crisis in Korea? To this question, scholars have many negative theories for one it may cause the deepening of panic due to the retrenchment policy, secondly the peoples economy could collapse due to the immense flow of international speculative capitals.
The unemployment rate could increase, wages could get lower and poverty worsened, incomes may decrease because of high inflation and increased taxes, and finally many may be by disadvantaged by various social security systems, and other political and social instability may occur.
The government has repeatedly campaigned that the IMF is a sort of panacea for the present economic crisis and has made an example of Mexico, pointing out that Mexico succeeded to overcome its economic crisis and had made economic development through IMF. However, this does not seem to be the case. The onset of severe trials has already opened.
The sufferings, that should be loaded to big enterprises and those responsible for the economic collapse have already become a burden to workers.
- The increase of unemployment and worsened labor conditions
Women workers in the midst of unemployment with no countermeasures
- n this situation, whose enterprises and monetary capitals are collapsing the Korea Bank reported that the number of dishonored companies in January of 1988 was upto 1,239 which would be higher if we were to count the small subcontract factories. At the end of January this year, the number of unemployed reached to over 700,000.
It is expected that the number of unemployed will increase to over 1,500,000 in this year, which means that one out of every 100,000 households will be unemployed. In the late 80s, many people became unemployed in the process of reorganizing the industrial structure.
In this case, most of the unemployed workers belonged to the electronics, garment, and shoes industries, industries geared mainly towards the encouragement of women workers. The crisis has however increased the amount of unemployed in these areas and also spread out on a wider scale to all industries. According to the National Statistics, the increase of the female unemployment rate is seven times bigger than male unemployment rate, since the third quarter of 1997.
Because 60% of women workers are working the small factories that have less than 5 workers, the present situation forces women workers out of their working places.
‘ company in Guro plants suddenly dishonored the company without notice in December, 1997. The company was a subcontract sewing factory supplied to Elcanto and Jindo, such a big company. And it has own brand, too. Which means that the company was quite stabilized. However, it was suddenly dishonored, and about 160 to 170 women workers lost their jobs and could not receive retiring allowances and even their salaries for past two months.’
Hope to get a job of any kind of work!!
- The Seoul federation of Women Workers has operated the Hot line for job application and there have been numerous calls for finding jobs from the end of last year. They are the fired workers and the housewives whose husbands were discharged from their jobs.
'From February 1st to the 18th, 1988, there were 147 of job applications from women. In January, 42% of the total applicants were in their 20s and 56% were in their 30s. But in March, the percentage of applicants in their 30s increased to 61 %, and 63% of them were married women. 10% of all applicants wanted any king of work which makes us feel the urgency and depth of the situation.'
Dismissals being implemented under evasion of the law
- In the situation, where workers are being dismissed illegally, the employment condition for women workers has worsened. The number of dismissed workers is increasing because of chained factories lockout and a systemised plan to reduce workers.
Businesses are also encouraging early retirements and even forced honorable resignations.
‘A factory in Masan moved its machines and resources to other surrounding factories and forced this women workers to move. However, at the same time, the company recruited new workers. One woman worker who refused not to move, was demoted to the cleaning section for a while and then, finally sent a dismissal notice.’
‘The metal factory in Pusan forced a woman worker of age, 55, to resign in the name of the cutting down of staff.’
In some cases, companies have encouraged mass resignation following which the company goes through certain steps to choose those who should volunteers. In this process, the company selects the active union members and militants to be dismissed. Clearly companies are taking advantages to weaken union activities.
‘The furniture collected a resignation en masse and the company sent an individual notice of dismissal on the next day. The company did not make any autonomous efforts to solve the crisis. The company did not pay for the retiring allowances at the time of dismissal. The company informed that the retiring allowance would be given quarterly after three months. The problem lies in that most of the active union members were on the list of dismissal.’
‘The Electronics made an announcement during a morning meeting, Those who are on maternity leave should not think of returning to work, as there will be no place for you with your return. The company pressurized married women on maternity wore pressures into beginning.’
Many women who have refused to work on Sundays have been dismissed suddenly with IMF. Married women, who have worked for a long time in professional jobs are usually the first targeted for dismissal.
Therefore, we can see the effects in the past ten years to achieve equal employment has led to nothing. Because of the deeply rooted thought that men are the main financial providers and that women can any time return to be housewives, women are usually the ones targeted for dismissal in part time jobs and temporary jobs.
Furthermore, the LG-ECS System Ltd., which went into the black of over 15 billion won, was sued due to the fact that the company still dismissed more than 600 workers.
Dismiss regular workers while the number of irregular workers increase
- According to the National Statistics in November, 1997, the rate of regular workers decreased by 4.8% while the rate of irregular workers was increased to 8%. The result was that the number of irregular workers increased to over six million which covers 45% of total workers. The great overseas monetary capitals, however, still pressure Korea to accept the major dismissals and the expeditionary man powers insisting that the labour market in Korea is stiffened.
‘In company, over a hundred women workers were dismissed and tens of women workers, able to work in their houses temporarily, were recruited.’
‘In company, the married women workers were dismissed and their jobs were handed over to the service company.’ ‘The company in Masan, fifteen regular women workers were called in individually by the company, and were forced to change their contract from the regular positions to irregular partimers or to quit the jobs.’
Unjust working , being worsened by working conditions
- We would be hard pressed to find a company that seeks the most beneficial way to all an d communicates with its workers as means to overcome the IMF crisis. In many cases, companies have made their own decisions for working conditions ignoring the agreements between the company and workers.
The companies are making use of this crisis to implement the ability based salary system with no extra allowances or bonus, which has been the constant desire of the companies. Companies have changed their working hours, and working terms, introduced the annual salary system and the capacity-based personnel system, and has forced people to use vacations and, not longer give bonus for unused vacations.
In many factories women workers are forced to use the annual vacations first.
‘The company did not pay for the workers wages and bonuses and the company force the workers to use their monthly and annual vacations.’
‘The company denied bonuses and reduced wages. It also forced workers to leave their union. The company pressured the workers, in the name of the dismissal plan, to leave the union, and some workers left the union. There are those companies that are really in crisis but some companies are making use of this situation to reduce wages and decrease working powers.
For the purpose of dismissing workers, they are going through not paying wages, forcing the use of vacation, and returning bonuses for the first stage.’
Workers in manufacturing, whose sections have been shutdown temporally are not being moved to busier sections. The workers who belong to the busy section have to do extra work as the company plans to dismiss those workers who are belonged to the sections that have been shutdown.
In Masan Free Export Plants, the trend is that the companies reduces and , at the same time load more work onto the existing workers and leave a number of workers on the waiting list through the line shutdown.
'The company in Guro Industrial Plants moved the factory to An Yang and demanded a 5% reduction of wages, 150% returning of bonuses, and no allowances for monthly and annual vacations and day- off.'
- The achievement of employment stability and overcoming its limits
- We can vividly recall the sufferings of women workers who were unjustly dismissal and the high unemployment during the industrial re-structuring in the late 80s. We are now confronted with a similar responsibility to stabilize employment under the IMF system.
We need to identify and punish those who are responsible for the present economic crisis. The government should punish those enterprises that are making use of this crisis for their own sake . Under the name of IMF crisis, they are conducting unjust dismissal, discriminative dismissal of women workers, and providing unjust working conditions.
The government should promptly handle those enterprises, that are, in fact, responsible for the present economic crisis. During Kim Young Sams presidency, the government spent 40 trillion won to reform the insolvent financial organs. However, the joint labor-management committee decided to provide 5 trillion won for the countermeasure funds for the unemployment and the major sum of the funds would be covered by donations and the government would spend only 250 billion won.
It is very insufficient amount for the increasing numbers of the unemployed. The present president Kim Dae Jung promised during his election campaign that the new government would guarantee for the stability of employment, the countermeasures for the unemployed, vocational training programs and job arrangements, creation of jobs, same treatment and social security for the working places which have less than five workers with the wider working places, equal treatment for the temporary workers, etc. The president should keep to his words.
The government, which is the biggest employer of all, should create more working seats in the public sections and equal opportunities for women workers should be implemented. We are strongly against the retro-gression of defending the maternity, supporting child care, and improvement of atmosphere for the industrial safety under the reason of IMF crisis.
There should be a budget allotted to support small and medium companies that are on the verge of collapse , for paying the unpaid wages of workers, for financing the dismissed workers, and for launching the social security systems. One sure way would be to reduce some of the budget for the national defense which should be done as soon as possible.
Enterprises should make efforts to avoid the dismissing workers by shortening working and by providing vocational trainings. Shortening working hours can be an effective way to decrease the number of the unemployed and it can create more employment.
This method has been suggested by many scholars to the government and enterprises. The average working hour for a week, per worker, in 1996 was 47.3 hours. If we can decrease it to 40 hours, about 2 million workers would still have jobs. The dismissal arrangement law and the labor expeditionary law, which were found to be violating the resolution of the labour-management committee, should be amended.
Now organizing free-lance workers and full-time workers in small plants comes to an urgent issue. The organizing should be solid and various projects should be developed and implemented. In the case of Han Kuk Machine, the workers union is a good model of the present situation.
The Han Kuk company tried to dismiss women workers in advance and the workers union struggled against the dismissal.
At last the union won in the struggle.(The whole story can be found in the Voices from the workplaces) This demonstrates the tactics used by companies and the conflicts it causes to its employees.
[ References ]
- The Vision and Task of Korean Economy in the IMF Times, Jin Ho Yoon
- The IMF Times and the Life of Workers, The Labor Union Institute of Research on the Enterprise Management
- Present Analysis on Women Employment, Seoul Women Workers
|