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Workers in Korea’s chaebols – the huge family monopolies like Dae Woo, Hyundai etc – and public sector utilities are fighting to retain jobs as Korea tries to restructure its economy under IMF direction. The 1998 crunch shrank Korea’s economy by 7% and unemployment rocketed to 9% in a few months; but the economy rebounded, growing by 9-10% a year and unemployment is back to about 4%. But overcapacity, especially in the auto industry and the chaebols’ massive debt blow-out leaves the Korean economy & future work in a challenging situation. Korean unions call for drastic reductions in work hours without loss of pay to share the cost of restructuring & ‘modernising’ the economy. This has been resisted of course and not yet achieved – at industry level, or more importantly, across the economy. Workers are reduced to fighting for jobs enterprise by enterprise, with the prospect of taking substantial job cuts to ‘save’ the companies, or risk bankruptcy & the loss of all jobs if they resist. The struggle against job losses must be turned into an offensive against the current system itself. The unions need to commit to a course of nationalisation of the chaebols, or allow their ‘internationalisation’ – ie let the global rivals buy them out, then organise in industry globally. Either way a drastic reduction in working hours – immediately to 40 and quickly to 35 from the current 48 to 50 hours a week (adopt the ‘25 hr by 2010’ standard!) is the only way to guarantee job security, allow restructuring, write off debt (close insolvent firms) & let investment flow into new & more productive industry ie it revitalizes most effectively economy wide.
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