News

The behaviour of the infamous Korean retail company E.Land gets more and more strange. Strongly conflicting information begins to emerge in the public as to how many non-regular workers - that is part-timers and others - the company has really fired. Quite apparently nervous because of the adverse publicity, company spokesmen try to belittle their mass dismissals. Their credibility is not supported by a refusal of the spokesmen to be identified.

This morning, Korean time, the government sent its riot police to forcibly evict the picketing workers from E.Land's store premises. Outrageous scenes with crying young women workers clinging to each other on the supermarket floor and trying to hold on to their personal possessions while heavily equipped riot police tore them out have gone through this evenings Korean TV news.

When the newsreels were rolling on the TV screens, Manchester United and FC Seoul were playing at the same stadium in Seoul which only hours before had bourne witness to this police repression on its ground floors.

Was there a management attempt to fake the collective agreement?

UNI Commerce has seen documentation which indicates that the company may have tried to use a fake collective agreement copy to justify the dismissals. The Korean collective agreement text which the management referred to in its communications to the union restricted employment security to union members only. The signed collective agreement copy which UNI Commerce headquarters in Switzerland have received tell another story.

The collective agreement that was negotiated and signed between Carrefour and its workers' union in 2006, with the involvement of UNI Commerce, secures the employment of all non-regular workers who have been in the company for at least 18 months.

Although E.Land's false information that it would concern only 170 workers who were unionised at the time falls on its absurdity, UNI Commerce has checked the facts with the previous employer. These contacts as well as the signed agreement copy received from the union are absolutely clear. The employment protection covers all 3,000 non-regular workers with a work relationship of 18 months or more, not only the 170 unionised workers as the company claimed in a letter to the union last spring.

Were employment documents falsified by management?

Recently, in Korean media, E.Land was said to have falsified employment documents with individual workers so that their contracts would not have to be transformed into a regular basis. The workers had been forced to work under false names and even with fake nametags, according to the allegations, which UNI Commerce has not been able to verify.

Against this backround it is difficult to understand that the government authorities now clamp down on the young women who were forced to take to a labour struggle in a desperate situation, trying to defend their families. The really immoral behaviour can be found when looking at the E.Land management and its chairman Song Park.

The obvious question arises easily:

Could there be some kind of an unhealthy solidarity between some government representatives and the E.Land management?

This is a question which the country's politicians should have an interest in resolving, particularly with a view of the presidential elections that are fast closing up.

This E.Land scandal does not add to Korea's credibility when it comes to fair labour standards. A major part of this year's ILO report on violations of freedom of association and collective bargaining conventions dealt with Korea, its employers and government.

It begins to look like this would be repeated next year as well.

For more stories and pictures on the E.Land workers' struggle, go to the dedicated UNI Commerce webpage:

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