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Riot police and young mothers face to face in Seoul:

Shop workers fight for working families as Korean retail chain takes to mass dismissals to outsource cashier jobs

Yesterday, the Korean capital Seoul saw a veritable stand-off at a large inner city hypermarket and department store complex as hundreds of young mothers stood face to face with the country's notoriously tough riot police. These shop workers and supermarket cashiers had brought their stores to a stand-still, fighting for their right to work and earn a livelihood for their families.

All over South Korea, eleven large E.Land stores were occupied by their employees on this summer Sunday. Inside, were the picketing shop workers - most of them young women. Outside were hundreds of workers from other trade unions, who had ventured to the sites in support of their friends and colleagues. Between the two picket lines was the riot police, in tight formations and full armour.

Three other E.Land stores had chosen not even to try to open their doors on Sunday morning.

Much is at stake for working families

The action at E.Land's Homever hypermarkets and New Core Outlet department stores is not just one of the many Korean labour conflicts, that so often have burst into picketing and plant occupations. This time, very much is at stake for Korea's working families, most of whom are yet to share in the country's economic upswing.

The striking shop workers are mostly employed as so-called non-regulars, with precarious and time limited contracts denying them employment security and many of the rights enjoyed by their colleagues.

This is not the first time that non-regular workers have taken action for their rights.

Weak labour legislation has lead the numbers of non-regular workers to explode to global record levels. More than half of the workforce have precarious contracts, 57 per cent, unions say. The official statistics say 36.7 per cent, still very high in an international comparison, but quite apparently the real numbers are closer to the union estimate.

New labour law turned against its purpose

To deal with the problem, the Korean government has introduced new legislation that came into force on 1 July. Designed to protect non-regular workers, as the government said, the law requires employers to give regular contracts to all non-regular workers that have workerd for at least two years.

Trade unions were more than sceptical when this legislation was introduced. They warned that instead of protecting the non-regulars, it would lead to mass dismissals as employers would try to avoid adding to their regular workforces. Regrettably, this has now been proved true by E.Land's actions.

E.Land now leads the race to the bottom

National retailer E.Land, who took over Carrefour's hypermarkets as the French multinational left a year ago, has resorted to mass dismissals to avoid granting permanent employment contracts to its non-regular workers. The company is not prepared to sign prmanent employment agreements with its many non-regular workers, such as the new law would require them to do. Instead, it seeks to outsource its cashiers and other store employees, to continue denying them job security and benefits.

E.Land's brutality against its staff is particularly disgusting as the company has committed itself to respecting the employment and collective agreement of the former Carrefour workers, taken over by the retailer when Carrefour left the Korean market last year. According to Carrefour, this was one of the conditions for selling its hypermarket chain to E.Land.

Not much is publicly known about how E.Land financed its take-over of Carrefour's hpermarkets. The sales price was reported to be 1.5 Billion USD, and the re-launch of the stores under the Homever banner would also have been a challenging task. Would it be so that this was a highly leveraged take-over which is now being paid for by the workers, losing their jobs and livelihoods?

Ice cream cones to riot police - sympathies are with picketing shop workers

Yesterday afternoon was very hot in the Korean capital, humid, with tempereatures well over 30 degrees Centergrade. The heat was surely felt also by the estimated 100,000 religious Christian enthusiasts who gathered for a prayer meeting at the Seoul's football world cup stadium. Among the sponsors were apparently also E.Land, this company that profiles itself as being deeply religious and applying this to all parts of its business and internal life.

But next door, at the Homever store which once was a Carrefour hypermarket, the reality was different. Here, desperate commercial workers had occupied the cashiers desks already last Tuesday. Keeping up a friendly co-existence with the riot police that had been sent there on Friday, the distributed ice cream cones to these young men who suffered from the heat and the weight of their uniforms.

This is indeed a struggle that has caught the hearts and minds of the ordinary Korean people, not only the policemen sweating in the heat outside the markets. E.Land has now done what many employers probably would like to do, but are reluctant to be as open and brutal about. And this has not been well received by the Korean public, whose sympathies are clearly with the fighting shop workers and their trade union.

E.Land pickets are a defence line for the whole labour movement

At the New Core Outlet department store complex in central Seoul this was very visible. Fellow trade unionists had arrived in large numbers to support the 'inside pickets'. The atmosphere was friendly but decisive, more like a large sit-in than a traditional picket, with music, singing, dancing and speeches in a continuous stream.

Here, one could see the solidarity between UNI affiliates from different sectors. Inside were the striking commercial workers, outside the building were the clerical workers, information technology workers, public services workers and hospital workers trade unions, all members of the UNI Korean Liaison Council. Seasoned union leaders were full of respect and admiration for the young women who were now spearheading their common struggle for decent work.

The temperature is rising also on Korea's political scene. Presidential hopefuls are in the middle of their election campaigns and closely followed by media. Many people here in Seoul believe that the governing party will not quietly accept the loss of face that E.Land's management is imposing on them.

After the heated discussions when the controversial law on non-regular workers was introduced, E.Land's mass dismissals - if accepted - could indeed hit hard on the government's credibility, and cost a lot of votes.