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In Turkey, members of UNI Commerce affiliate Tez-Koop-IS have staged a solidarity demonstration for their shop worker colleagues in Korea. The Homever, New Core and Kim's Club workers' trade union has also received material support from the Turkish commerce union, to help them survive and win the long drawn strike.

Trade unions around the globe are stepping up their support for the young Korean shop workers, who are fighting for their jobs in a bitter struggle against retail giant E.Land. The Korean fashion retailer bought Carrefour's hypermarket chain last year, and proceeded to dismiss over 1,000 of its workers during the first months of 2007.

The dismissed workers were supermarket and department store cashiers and sales assistants, mainly young women working on a part-time basis or with time-limited contracts. Through the dismissals, the company tries to escape its obligations to grant permanent contracts to most of them, as required by new labour legislation. Making use of a loophole in the law, E.Land wanted to outsource these functions instead.

From the beginning, this labour conflict has been marked by a close complicity between the employer and the South Korean government. Instead of intervening in the many irregularities that management has been caught for, the authorities have done their best to suppress any trade union action by the E.Land workers. Sit-in strikes have been forcibly ended through riot police interventions with young women workers torn to waiting prison buses and transported to police stations around the Korean capital.

By the end of August, ten local trade union representatives remain in police prisons. Demands to release them have been ignored by the Korean decision makers and government authorities, including an intervention by the Director General of the International Labour Organisation ILO.

The New Core Outlet, Kim's Club and Homever workers struggle has drawn much support and admiration from trade unions around the world. UNI Commerce affiliates such as UFCW in the United States and ver.di in Germany have already given financial support to their Korean colleagues, as well as SETCa-BBTK in Belgium, Tez-Koop-IS in Turkey and HK in Denmark.

Earlier this week, E.Land announced the launch of its new Who.A.U. fashion store chain in the United States, with the first outlet to be opened in October. UNI Commerce is in discussions with US trade unions about suitable ways of informing the American consumers about the company's behaviour at home in Korea. In fact, the target group in the United States is identical to the company's target in Korea, young women - but the difference is that the American teens and young people will be targeted commercially, in Korea by riot police and hired thugs.

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