The 1995 National Women Workers' Rally was held on 11 March at Yonsei University organised by the preparatory committee of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU). The focus of this rally was to promote lifetime equal employment for women at the workplace in remembrance of the 87th 3.8 International Women's Day. Five hundred people participated.
The event provoked new emotions because for the first time a women workers' rally was organised not by women workers but by the preparatory committee for the KCTU. The establishment of the KCTU this year has historical significance in the history of the Korean Labor Movement.
The meeting was divided into an anniversary ceremony and cultural events by women workers. During the anniversary ceremony, co-representative Park Yong-Mok indicated that the Government labor policies which emphasised globalization increased the severity of women's employment instability endangering the successful results of the struggles by women in the past over such issues as the abolition of women bank employees' system, and the establishment of gender equality in employment law.
He also suggested that the KCTU would provide a powerful forum, where all union members of the KCTU would solve the problems of women workers together. The co-chairperson of the National Trade Union of Professional Workers, Heo Chang, stressed that the reinforcement of women's solidarity through strengthening women committees and women offices was a short term way of solving women's problems, and that women and men must work together before the problems could really be solved.
Lee Young-Soon, a representative of KWWAU, also emphasized that the labor union movement had to reflect on its indifference, coolness and unco-operativeness with regards to women labor problems and criticized the short-sightedness of seeing women problems as splitting labor movements.
Above all, she emphasized that to be a potent organization for workers, the KCTU must do its best to address the women workers' problems which traditionally had always been treated as a secondary issue.
Next, Lee Jae-Sook, Korea head of women's section in the Telecom Labor Union, presented their demands to, "Enforce paid menstruation leave and child-rearing leave!", "Assure employment stability and employment equality for women!", "Enforce the establishment of workplace childcare centers and extend existing centres!", "Establish industrial unionism and the KCTU!" The strong presentation of these demands encouraged participants.
The play, "You are the professionalists", which was performed in the second part of the rally further inspired participants. In this play a female worker was given a huge round of applause from the participants in the rally when she represented a tired woman's reality in which she had to perform housework and outside work simultaneously. The 1995 National Women Workers Rally was closed with the performance of the musical "To the hopeful future".
No one can disagree that women workers have devoted themselves to the labor movement in a most tenacious and co-operative way. Nevertheless, employment instability which women workers face is caused by factors like the insufficiency of maternity protection, increasing use of dispatched workers and part-time employment, exclusion of job-training objectives. Until now the labor union movement has not dealt with these problems which all severly affect working conditions.
Through this 1995 National Women Workers rally, we reaffirmed that we would accomplish our goals for lifetime equal employment, overcoming the reality of employment instability. We all hope that the KCTU which will be launched this year will take an even more positive interest in and seek to find solutions for women workers' problems.