Text Fwd: Cleaning workers report benefits from unionizing as standoff continues at Hongik

* Image source & caption : same as the link

Duksung Women’s University cleaning workers prepare to leave their furnished workers’ lounge to continue work in the student center of the university in Seoul, Jan. 13.　 (Photo by Lee Jong-keun)　

* Text from Steve Zeltzer on Jan. 14, 2011
Hankyoreh
Cleaning workers report benefits from unionizing as standoff continues at Hongik Workers report employment stability and increased benefits after forming a labor union
Lee Seung-joon and Kim Ji-hoon　
　　

“I am so happy not to be worrying whether I am going to be fired or not. There is a world of difference between having a labor union and not having one.”

On Tuesday afternoon, while cleaning workers at Seoul’s Hongik University held a demonstration at the school’s front gate denouncing mass layoffs by the school, “Lee,” a 46-year-old cleaning worker, was at Duksung Women’s University busily moving desks in a classroom.

“Ever since the labor union came to be, I have been able to say what I want to,” Lee said. “I can also rest on Saturdays, and it is nice to spend more time with my family.”

The Hongik workers had been protesting against the school’s layoffs, and attention is now focusing on universities that have found a way to coexist by guaranteeing employment for cleaning workers.

Like the Hongik workers, the 48 cleaning workers at Duksung Women’s University are irregular workers hired by a service contracting agency. However, the labor environment and treatment of the workers gradually began to change after they formed a labor union in October 2007. Their monthly salary went up from 730 thousand Won ($655) before the union’s formation to 1.05 million Won. The practice of uncompensated work on Saturdays disappeared. The workers also no longer had to endure frequent character insults by the agency manager and improper orders such as demand that they pick up garbage from a bus stop located 100 meters away from the school’s front gate. The workers’ lounge, which workers said was like a refugee camp, was provided with heating and cooling systems and personal lockers.

“Most of all, it is great not to have to worry about getting fired if we protest unjust treatment and demand improvements,” Lee said.


“Since the union was formed, they can no longer hire a substitute work force for a three-month period even if we get sick,” said another worker, “Jeong,” who has been working at the school for over eight years. “It is a great relief.”

Relatively freed from concern about their employment status, workers have been able to focus more on their work. “Since the union was formed, the cleaning workers have rallied together more and worked more responsibly to avoid giving the union a bad image,” said a contracting agency official.

Han Won-sun, 55, head of the Korea Public Service Union’s Duksung Women’s University chapter, said, “At the time the union was being established, the university president made efforts to have dialogue with the union, and most of the students gave their support, so we were able to be avoid an extreme situation like the one at Hongik.”

“Cleaning workers need to know that they are also part of the school,” Han added. “The question is what Hongik University hopes to get from fighting with powerless workers.”

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