Organizing at the Margins

Jihye Chun Jennifer

Description

The realities of globalization have produced a surprising reversal in the focus and strategies of labor movements around the world. After years of neglect and exclusion, labor organizers are recognizing both the needs and the importance of immigrants and women employed in the growing ranks of low-paid and insecure service jobs. In Organizing at the Margins, Jennifer Jihye Chun focuses on this shift as it takes place in two countries: South Korea and the United States. Using comparative historical inquiry and in-depth case studies, she shows how labor movements in countries with different histories and structures of economic development, class formation, and cultural politics embark on similar trajectories of change. Chun shows that as the base of worker power shifts from those who hold high-paying, industrial jobs to the formerly "unorganizable," labor movements in both countries are employing new strategies and vocabularies to challenge the assault of neoliberal globalization on workers' rights and livelihoods. Deftly combining theory and ethnography, she argues that by cultivating alternative sources of "symbolic leverage" that root workers' demands in the collective morality of broad-based communities, as opposed to the narrow confines of workplace disputes, workers in the lowest tiers are transforming the power relations that sustain downgraded forms of work. Her case studies of janitors and personal service workers in the United States and South Korea offer a surprising comparison between converging labor movements in two very different countries as they refashion their relation to historically disadvantaged sectors of the workforce and expand the moral and material boundaries of union membership in a globalizing world.

Sujets

• Employabilité, métiers et formations
• USA
• United States of America
• Industrial relations
• Korea
• History of the Americas
• History of Asia
• États-Unis
• Corée

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 janvier 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780801458453
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

ORGANIZING AT THE MARGINS

ORGANIZING AT THE MARGINS The Symbolic Politics of Labor in South Korea and the United States

Jennifer Jihye Chun

ILR PRESS AN IMPRINT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON

The Korea Foundation has provided nancial assistance for the undertaking of this publication project.

Copyright © 2009 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2009 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America

Librarians: A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-0-8014-4711-2 (cloth : alk. paper)

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood bers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Clothprinting

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my parents

Contents

Preface ix Acknowledgments xv Abbreviations xix

1.  The Symbolic Leverage of Labor 2.  Employer and State Offensives against Unionized Workers 24 3.  Reconstructing the Marginalized Workforce 4.  Social Movement Legacies and Organizing the Marginalized 68 5.  What Is an Employer? Organizing Subcontracted University Janitors 6.  What Is a Worker? Organizing Independently Contracted Home Care Workers and Golf Caddies 7.  Dilemmas of Organizing Workers at the Margins

Notes 185 Bibliography 199 Index 215

1

44

101

142 171

Preface

In the summer of 1998, I left Berkeley, California, and arrived in Seoul, Korea. I was immediately swept up in a wave of union protests organized by the Ko- rean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU)the militant democratic wing of the labor movement. With raised  sts and indignant voices, hundreds of thousands of unionists participated in mass rallies, marches, and strikes to ex- press their opp osition to structural adjustment reforms by the International 1 Monetary Fund (IMF). While the Korean government insisted that privatiza- tion, labor market deregulation, and exible labor law revisions were all neces- sary for the country to overcome the so-called IMF crisis, the nations highly militant workforce rejected the assault on their wages and livelihoods. From the huge banners that were prominently displayed at public demonstrations to the synchronized chants of protesting unionists, the terms of their opposition were clear: Eradicate Unilateral Economic Restructuring! Guarantee Job Security! Defend Workers Right to Live! There would be no national economic recov- ery off the backs of workers. The mass opposition of Korean workers to the exible prescriptions of ne- oliberal globalization was exactly what led my ethnographic pursuits from one of Silicon Valleys high-tech shop oors to the contentious streets of downtown Seoul. My previous research examining low-paid assembly work, and much of the literature on the fate of trade unions under globalization, indicated that workers had little, if any, power to challenge the  exible imperatives of todays highly competitive global economy. While touted for its win-win advantages

ix