While President-elect Park Geun-hye and the Saenuri Party are celebrating their election victory, despairing workers are falling, literally, one by one.
Two unionized workers and one civic activist have taken their own lives since the Dec. 19 presidential election, leaving notes filled with desperation about ``five more years” of labor repression.
President-elect Park might feel disappointed, even displeased, with what she sees as their unduly hasty surrendering of hope even before the next leader has the chance to turn her promises into reality. If so, she must act ― quickly ― to show that she is different from the incumbent president.
During campaigns, Park pledged she would make it hard for employers to dismiss workers, and declare those workplaces where massive layoffs are inevitable as ``employment disaster zones.”Her idea, albeit too abstract and somewhat smacking of word play, seems laudable, except it talks mostly about future situations, not existing problems.
Park is also interested in the labor movement of the past. Befitting for a candidate whose slogan was ``grand national unity,” she tried to visit the foundation in memory of Chun Tae-il ― who burned himself to death in 1970 in protest against former President Park Chung-hee’s oppression of workers and became the symbol of Korea’s union movement ― only to be repudiated by foundation officials.
Instead, she was told by Chun’s bereaved family members to first visit the altar memorializing 23 former employees of Ssangyong Motor who have killed themselves or died of diseases after being laid off a few years ago. All this shows Park’s sympathy with struggling workers should focus not on the past or future but on the present ― right here and now. It was only during the later phase of campaigns that Park and her Party dropped their opposition to holding parliamentary probes into the case.
The president-elect vows to enact a law on ``in-house subcontracting,” an indirect form of employment through manpower suppliers to save various costs for regular hiring. But the proposed law might up end up as only legalizing the abnormal labor practices, as the law on non-regular workers aimed to protect temps and part-timers has led to a sharp increase in their number amid little improvement of their status and treatment by employers. As always, nothing really changes without fundamental approaches.
And one such basic remedy is for Park to accept a request from workers to revise the Labor Standard Act in ways to make it next to impossible for business owners to unilaterally fire workers for reasons of managerial difficulties.
We know Park should be very busy when organizing a transition team and planning for a state administration over the next five years. But nothing can be more urgent than stopping the parade of worker’s suicides. A leader elected on the pledge of ``100-percent Korea” and a nation in which ``each and every citizen can be happy” can never put the plight of more than half of all workers on the back burner.
The least she can do now is to send a message of reassurance for the desolated workers. Make a call to the two former Ssangyong workers who have been protesting on a 50-meter-high steel tower for more than two months.