Text Fwd: A Message from Crane No. 85

* Image source: Hankyoreh, Feb. 16, 2011

Hankyoreh
A Message from Crane No. 85
By Kim Jin-suk, Direction Committee Member, Busan Office, Korean Confederation of Trade Unions
Posted on : Feb.16,2011 15:02 KST
　　
On Monday, Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction (HHIC) announced that it would finalize its list of workers targeted for layoffs. The HHIC a lso announced that it was laying off 650 workers once before, in 2003. After two years of dispute between labor and management, it agreed to pull its restructuring plans, but the company unilaterally overturned that agreement. On that day, Kim Ju-ik, head of the HHIC chapter of the Korean Metal Workers’ Union (KMWU), went up by himself into Crane No. 85 at the Yeongdo shipyard and held out for 129 days before finally hanging himself from the crane. Perhaps another member was a partner in death, unable to let him go off alone to the next world after 129 days of ghastly isolation. It was only after another union member, Gwak Jae-gyu, took his own life that the struggle came to an end after more than two years.

The next seven years saw an uneasy peace. After the Lee Myung-bak administration came into office, however, HHIC capital once again brandished the blade of layoffs last year. HHIC capital reproduced the exact same situation as in 2003, with the layoff announcement, the union strike, the labor-management agreement, and the unilateral overturning of the agreement by the company.

In the process, more than 3,000 subcontracted workers lost their jobs. I spent many sleepless nights asking myself how many more workers had to be fired from this factory before the battle would come to an end. Hundreds of times, I asked myself what choice I would have made if I were Ju-ik, my close friend for twenty years. Finally, on Janu. 6, I went up myself into crane No. 85, the same one he had mounted eight years before. On Monday, KMWU Busan Yangsan branch head Mun Cheol-sang and HHIC chapter head Chae Gil-yong went up into a different crane.

Monday, my fortieth day inside this crane, was Valentine’s Day. Even here in Crane No. 85, disconnected and far off from the world, two bags of chocolates were hoisted up on a rope. One was handmade by the middle school daughter of a union member who did not file for voluntary resignation and is scheduled to be laid off. The other was sent by the sixth grader daughter of a subcontracting worker.

The date when girls, with quivering heart, pass chocolates made with trembling little hands to the boyfriend who set their hearts fluttering. Did that middle school girl know it was also the day her father was being fired from his factory after 26 years of service? Did the sixth grader daughter of that subcontracting worker know that when a regular worker is fired, her irregular worker father ends up living out of a bag and traveling from place to place in search of work?

Attached to the chocolates sent by the subcontracting worker’s sixth grader daughter was a letter that reads, “We hope you can come down quickly, we will treat you to some meat.” If I was this choked up over a letter written by a girl I’d never heard of or laid eyes on before, imagine how Kim Ju-ik must have cried when he received a letter from his own nine-year-old daughter reading, “Daddy, I’ll find you a job. Please stop what you’re doing.” Imagine how he felt at the end, unable up to keep his promise to his three children to buy them Wheelies sneakers when he came back down.

The world forced him to abandon one of his two promises. In the end, he chose his promise to the union members and go back on his promise to his children. Having to go back on one promise in order to keep another - these are the rules of the game made by the capitalists.

At 3:15 a.m. on Jan. 6, as I was climbing Crane No. 85, I grabbed onto one of the right-angled steps. For an instant, a sharp blade cut across my heart. I realized that here, in this space of isolation where a man cried out plaintively to the world and no one listened - here was where Kim Ju-ik, father of three children and representative of workers, first set down his heavy load. It was a spot that I confirmed by hunch eight years later.

Right now, I am sitting where Ju-ik sat, seeing the last landscape he saw before departing this world. I can see people passing blithely by and cars busily traveling in either direction. How many of them can see the hand of a female worker who held out for 27 years after being fired at the age of 26, with the single dream of returning to her co-worker’s side, and who now waves earnestly at the world from this crane with a promise to defend that co-worker?

February 14, Crane No. 85, Yeongdo Shipyard, Hanjin Heavy Industries

The views presented in this column are the writer‘s own, and do not necessarily reflect those of The Hankyoreh.

Text Fwd: With 400 jobs on the line, labor activist continues 15-day subzero sit-in

* Image & caption source: same as the link
Korea Federation of Trade Unions (KCTU) Direction Committee member Kim Jin-suk waves at people below as she continues her sit-in demonstration in subzero temperatures on a vessel crane at the Bus

Hankyoreh
With 400 jobs on the line, labor activist continues 15-day subzero sit-in
: The KCTU has called upon Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction to end layoffs in the manufacturing sector
Jan. 21, 2011
Kim Gwang-soo, Staff Writer　
　　
Enforcement fines of one million Won ($891) per day have been levied since Monday against Kim Jin-suk, 51, a member of the direction committee for the Busan office of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU). The KCTU has been holding a protest to call on Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction (HHIC) to end their layoffs. Kim’s protest, from the 35-meter high driver’s seat of a vessel crane at HHIC’s Yeongdo shipyard amid subzero weather, marks its fifteenth day Friday. When Kim refused to call off the protest even after the company received Jan. 6 court ruling for her removal and an injunction prohibiting her entrance to the worksite, the company requested indirect enforcement from the court.

An official at Busan District Court said, “If someone does not pay the enforcement fine, we can confiscate their real estate and request an auction.”

Kim now also has to pay large amounts of compensation. The company filed a lawsuit against Kim, KCTU, and the labor union requesting 110 million Won in damages, claiming that it has had to pay large late charges to ship owners because of the halt to ship construction work from her protest and labor union obstructions of operations.

The company charges that in addition to the loss from being unable to engage in shipbuilding because of the crane’s occupation, it is also suffering enormous tangible and intangible damages due to the long-term protest, including diminished external confidence.

“They claim they are levying the enforcement fine according to the system, but it is cruel to request a fine over someone calling for guarantees of the right to live for socially disadvantaged farmers and workers,” said Kim Hyeong-gu, secretary-general of the Busan-area human rights group Solidarity for Labor Human Rights.

Kim Jin-suk, who in January 2010 held a hunger strike in front of the Yeongdo shipyard to demand that HHIC withdraw its plans for layoffs, climbed up into the vessel crane to begin her protest on Jan. 6 after the company once again notified the union on Dec. 15 of its plans to lay off 400 manufacturing workers.

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