Yang Bong-soo, an employee fired from the plant in February for conducting a sit- in to protest the factory's excessive production workload, set himself on fire at the entrance to the plant after Hyundai security guards refused him entry to attend a union meeting. Yang died in a hospital four weeks later. His struggle galvanized workers at the plant and led to work stoppages throughout the week of May 15.
Strike leaders demanded compensation for then-critically-injured Yang, the return of seven workers dismissed from the Ulsan plant since 1992 and an apology.
Hyundai responded by shutting down the plant indefinitely.
A May 18 rally against the shutdown by 5,000 strikers and members of the Hyundai Precision and Industry and Hyundai Heavy Industry unions was followed by a May 19 pre-dawn raid on the plant by 2,000 riot police. Police arrested more than 300 protestors and charged 13 protest leaders with leading an illegal strike.
The police raid followed threats by Hyundai union leaders to bring the company to a grinding halt if the government and the corporation resorted to force rather than negotiation to end the walkout.
On June 3, over 10,000 Korean students and labor organizers demonstrated in Seoul against government crackdowns on unions, demanding the release of detained labor leaders. The demonstration was fueled not only by the events in Ulsan, but also by labor discontent with the government's attempts to privatize Korea Telecom, the national telephone company.
On June 6, Seoul police ignored protests by religious authorities and stormed a Buddhist temple and the city's Catholic Cathedral to arrest 13 Korea Telecom union leaders who had been holding sit-ins there since before the demonstrations. Six of these leaders were in the midst of a hunger strike begun in late May to protest the privatization initiative.
According to Ellen Greenberg of the Seoul-based Yong Dong Po Urban Industrial Mission, protestors fear that privatization of the telecommunications sector in Korea will "lead to job reductions of thousands of workers, and provide a way for the government to reduce union influence," as well as increasing the power of chaebols.
Chaebols are huge industrial conglomerates - usually built along kinship lines - that dominate the Korean economy and wield enormous political influence. Unionists fear that chaebol control of the telecommunications industry would lead to anti-competitive behavior.
According to news wire reports and the labor journal Korean Worker, the government has insisted that it will not tolerate illegal union actions that President Kim Young-Sam has characterized as "national-security threatening." The Korean Ministry of Labor in Seoul did not respond to inquiries by Multinational Monitor about the government response to the protests.
The May and June conflicts come on the heels of six months of renewed labor unrest in Korea. The Korea Telecom fight mirrors disputes in the later half of 1994 involving the National Railway Engineers Federation and the Seoul Subway Workers Union. Strikes by these unions in July 1994 over wage freezes prompted police raids and the arrest of 20 union leaders, five of whom had been sheltered in the Cho-Gye Buddhist Temple. Several monks were injured as they attempted to block the arrests.
On April 18, 1995, an independent Korean Council of Trade Unions (KCTU) delegation visiting new Labor Minister Jin Nyum was set upon by riot police without provocation, according to Korean and international trade unions. A report from the KCTU and the Washington, D.C.-based AFL-CIO International Affairs Department indicates that police beat and detained dozens of workers, forcing the hospitalization of eight workers with injuries ranging from brain damage to broken limbs. The next day, police stormed the hospital to incarcerate six injured workers.
While the labor conflicts of the last few months pale beside the massive, anti- military government unrest of the late 1980s, the recent surge in labor militancy has worried the government. It seems particularly concerned about moves by workers to organize trade union councils independent of the pro-government Federation of Korea Trade Unions.
Although Korea's military government was replaced by a civilian administration in 1993, labor repression continues virtually unabated, despite election promises to reform Korea's harsh labor laws. "Two years into a so-called democratic government, you still have the police and the military treating labor actions as criminal actions and a government that is ignoring the advice of the International Labor Organization to bring its laws into compliance with international standards," says Pharis Harvey of the Washington, D.C.- based International Labor Rights Education and Research Fund.
Lim Song Khu, assistant secretary of the Seoul Subway Workers Union, speaking to labor activists in Australia in 1994, made a similar point. "The only change [in Korea] is that the ideology of international competition has replaced Cold War ideology. The restraint of wage increases and attempts to negatively revise the labor laws are all justified in the name of improving Korean competition in the international market."
Korean labor law continues to ban unions not included in the Federation of Korea Trade Unions. Government critics view this limitation as an attempt to curb independent national and industry-wide union organizations, such as the Workers' Federation of Hyundai Companies.
"The government and industry are dead-set against the formation of any chaebol-wide trade union federation," says Harvey. "Hyundai has the strongest chaebol [so] whenever any Hyundai [union] organization attempts to strike, [the company and the government] bring in the full power of the government in an attempt to suppress them." Since many Hyundai unionists are quite militant, says Harvey, "the disputes often escalate to armed violence on the part of the government."
Changes in the broader Korean economy may also be driving recent government crackdowns on the South Korean labor movement. Wages have increased rapidly since the late 1980s.
"These wages are a real concern to the government, particularly the economic planners," says Gordon Flake, research director at the Korean government-funded Korea Economic Institute. "The government sees their competitiveness eroding as their traditional strengths in the low-value-added, labor-intensive goods such as footwear and electronics are lost to China and Southeast Asia."
Harvey agrees that international competition provides a partial explanation for the actions of the government. He notes, however, "international competitiveness is used as an excuse by Korea and every other repressive government."
Perhaps more important in explaining the government crackdown is the campaign for the June 27 local elections in which the ruling party is faring poorly. "Labor unrest is generally looked down upon by [Korean] society at large," says Flake. "If the president can seem strong and seem to have firm control, he will be viewed favorably by the public at large."
Harvey agrees with this assessment. "The present government does not have a labor constituency and so will play to the middle class who are worried about competitiveness by engaging in strong actions, irrespective of what these actions will mean to Korea's long-term development success."
- Craig Forcese
Like many other brand-name shoe and apparel makers, Nike contracts out the job of actually manufacturing the goods it designs, markets and sells. Most of Nike's suppliers are Korean- or Taiwanese-run operations in Indonesia.
In response to accusations by workers making shoes in Nike's 10 Indonesian supplier factories - accusations voiced sometimes by the workers but more often through international allies who do not have to fear for their jobs or safety - Nike adopted a voluntary code of conduct in 1992. The company also entered into "memorandums of understanding" with each of its suppliers to ensure they uphold Nike standards.
But a look at current Nike activities in Indonesia shows that the company and its suppliers frequently violate their most basic promises.
Code of misconduct
Workers at Nike's supplier factories report dangerous conditions, intimidation of employees and paltry wages.
Siti (not her real name), a worker at the P.T. Pratama Abedi Industri (PAI) factory in Serpong, near Jakarta, was physically abused by her Korean supervisor, Mr. Kang, in April. Slapped in the face and swatted on her behind, Siti had inadvertently scuffed a Nike shoe she was working on, rendering it unacceptable to the buyer. Kang, who had come to PAI from P.T. Nagasakti (NASA), another of Nike's 10 Indonesian suppliers, brought over Mr. Lee, another supervisor, to see her mistake. "You are a dog!" he shouted in the only Korean words that the workers understand. She was too fearful to lodge a protest, Siti says.
The workers at PAI work 60-hour weeks with few breaks. "The only rest you can get is after you collapse at your machine," Siti says. It happened to her recently, she says. She nodded off and hit her head, after which she got a short rest in the infirmary.
When asked if management excuses mistakes made by workers who toil to the point of exhaustion, Siti replies that her supervisors are very unforgiving. Physical attacks on workers occur often, she says.
A friend of Siti's says Mr. Kang recently slapped each member of a 14-person quality control team at PAI.
Some of the 12,000 workers at the huge Nikomas plant, Nike's largest supplier in Indonesia, tell similar stories. Nikomas workers say line supervisors demand unrealistic production targets which lead to serious injuries. "A worker lost four fingers last week," one says, adding that someone lost a few fingertips the previous night. "Workers go to dangerous machinery without even a week's training," adds Tantowi, a Nikomas employee.
Cheating on wages is also a problem at Nikomas, workers allege. Last year, the company delayed payment of a new minimum wage scheduled to begin April 1. The wage was to go from about $1.35 to $1.80 per day. In fact, the company did not begin to pay the increased wage until a massive strike was called in mid-July.
Nikomas has dealt harshly with protesting workers. In March 1995, the company locked 12 workers who expressed grievances in an unused room on the factory premises for a week, keeping them under the watch of a uniformed member of the local military command. Since then, the workers have been suspended without pay in violation of the Indonesian labor code.
Nike did not respond to questions about the 12 workers.
Memorandum of misunderstanding
These sorts of abuses are supposed to be a thing of the past. Nike now insists that each of its suppliers sign a "memorandum of understanding," which is supposed to guarantee that contractors comply with Nike's codes, forswear forced labor and respect the environment. The memorandum is the centerpiece of a 100-plus-page "Nike Production Primer" sent to journalists and researchers at ethical investment funds in late 1994. Nike first started touting the memorandum - along with its Code of Conduct - more than three years ago. The Primer devotes about 10 pages to addressing specific charges of abusive labor practices by Nike suppliers, mostly in Indonesia. The rest of the Primer is filled with statements by factory managers indicating that each is applying the new standards.
The Production Primer notes only two instances of intervention by Nike's managers in Indonesia over the three and a half years since the code and memorandum been introduced. Those who work for Nike suppliers suggest much more supervision will be necessary if Nike's purported standards are to be meaningfully enforced.
Tantowi, a Nikomas employee, brightens when told of the memorandum of Understanding. He is happy to learn that the Primer promises that the memorandum should be posted - in English and Indonesian - near each production line in Nike- producing factories.
While no factory workers interviewed by Multinational Monitor ever saw the memorandum, it is prominently posted at the entrance of Nike's twenty-second-floor office in downtown Jakarta.
Nike did not respond to questions about whether their memorandum of understanding was posted at each production line as promised in the Primer.
"Do you think Nike's American managers would respond to our demands - based on the memorandum - if we went straight to them?" Tantowi asks.
Tantowi is keenly aware of the leverage Nike's U.S. managers can exert on their supplier supervisors in Indonesia. "We feel so much better when [the buyers are] around," Tantowi says. He was among the hundreds of workers at P.T. Nikomas last year who witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of a U.S. Nike manager dressing down a malevolent Taiwanese supervisor, Simon Chi. Chi had lost his temper with a young Indonesian line worker, shouting in such a threatening manner that the girl fainted and was taken to the infirmary.
Conversations with workers who produce Nike shoes suggest the mother company does indeed have the authority to dramatically improve the plight of their contract labor force - if the company ever were to decide to vigorously enforce its written standards.
Recent labor unrest in Indonesia has improved workers' bargaining strength modestly. Activists and academics alike say that the hundreds of strikes around Jakarta in the last three years have forced employers to pay at least the government-set minimum wage. But, to attract foreign investment, the minimum wage is set at just 6 percent above the poverty line.
In repressive Indonesia, prospects for more far-reaching improvements in working conditions appear dim in Nike supplier factories unless Nike sends a clear signal to its suppliers.
- Jeff Ballinger
But at least one company in Indonesia has found that to win and maintain Nike contracts it needs to squeeze workers performing contract work for Nike exports harder than it does those producing shoes for the local market.
Producing cheap shoes for the Indonesian market, the Canadian company Bata pays full-time workers nearly double the rate it pays workers making expensive sports shoes for export. Laborers making Nike shoes for Bata are designated "contract workers" and rarely granted the status of permanent workers. For permanent employees, Bata has a collective labor agreement, which contains a seniority scale for workers who stay with the company. The lack of increased pay after the first year's experience is one of the chief complaints workers have against Nike suppliers operating in Indonesia.
Bata's full-time workers also get a holiday bonus of between $170 and $450 each year. The most that their Nike contract workers receive is about $50.
- J.B.