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2004-09-03 12:51:13 |
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 KoPA |
 Struggle of Korean power plant workers against privatization, Nov. 2003 |
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Presentation made at Jubilee South Conference on Debt and Privatization, Nov. 2003
Struggle of Korean power plant workers against privatization
Jung Bo-Hwa
Director of Anti-privatization Team, Korean Power Plant Workers Union
I think there have been many presentations on importance of public utilities and problems of their privatization. I would like to share our experiences of struggles against privatization.
Korea had to suffer from foreign currency crisis at the end of 1997 and borrow money from the IMF. IMF demanded privatization of public sectors, softening of labor market, opening of Korean market and commercialization as their conditionality. Korean government followed it.
Most of public utilities including telecommunication, power, railway, gas were subject to privatization. Workers were laid out when their companies were sold out. As many as thirty thousand workers from telecommunication and fifteen from power plants were laid out.
From 1998, workers from public utilities started to fight against privatization to keep their right to live. At the beginning, labor unions were not strong enough that Korea Tobacco and Ginseng had to be sold out and Korea Telecom had to lose more than 50% of their stocks to foreign capitals. Privatization of the Korea Telecom resulted in huge increase of people’s expenditure and two private companies SK and LG can dominate the mobile phone market in Korea. Government’s propaganda that privatization would promote fair competition in markets and would lower price was turned out to be a lie.
If you want to privatize power, railway, and gas in Korea you have to change legislations about those utilities. Fortunately, thanks to labor unions’ struggle in 1999, we could prohibit changes of related laws and regulations. But in December 2000, legislation for privatization of power had passed the parliament. Thermal power plant’s division of the Korea Electric Power Corporation had to be divided into five different companies and government can sell out thermal power plants, now.
Though, we are divided into five different companies, power plant workers set up a new labor union in April 2001 and started fighting against privatization. We, power plant workers were very aware of importance of public utility supply to general people. And we knew that it fighting against privatization is a way to protect our right to live while seeing many colleagues being laid out.
Because, it was very difficult to struggle against government and transnational capitals, we made a united front with railway workers and gas workers, which made it difficult for government to sell off public utilities. Though, legislation for privatization of power had already passed, we, power plant workers still fought against legislation for privatization of railway and gas. The source of Power of Korean labor movement is the strong solidarity.
Feb. 25, 2002, three unions started strikes demanding change of government’s privatization policy. The strike was successful and we could stop privatization of railway and gas. But we, power plant workers had to continue our strike to stop selling off South-east Thermal Power, one of our five thermal powers. We used so called ‘disperse struggle’, a tactic in which 5600 workers form small groups of 10-15 people and spread around the country instead of forming a large rank in the workplace to avoid the police breaking up our ranks. We toured every parts of Korea to let people know of our struggle against privatization for 38 days. In spite of criticism from government and conservative media, we could win general public’s support and Korean people became to know that privatization of power, railway and gas should be prevented. In March 2003, privatization of the South-east Thermal Power was cancelled. It was a victory of workers solidarity.
Thouth, Korean government is still arguing privatization of public utilities and transnational capitals are pushing Korean government, we will keep fighting against privatization of public utilities. We are preparing for a bigger struggle to gain people’s control on power plants.
We are here for our solidarity. I want to strengthen our solidarity with all of you to fight against transnational capitals and privatization policy on the Earth. I do hope your struggle against privatization will succeed in your own country.
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Song Yu-Na
People’s Solidarity for Social Progress, Korea
We came to realize many important things from our struggle.
We, together with all our friends here, water, power, railway, and gas should be provided as basic human rights. But, state-ownership cannot guarantee equitable use and share of public utilities. Public utilities in Korea as well as in other Asian countries, were built up to promote expansion of capitals. Therefore we must keep struggles to achieve people’s control over public utilities. This is a big challenge for Korean labor movement to solve, at the moment.
We also need to think about essence of struggles against privatization. IMF and World Bank want to promote private capital’s profit by pushing all Asian countries to take away their public sectors. They are controlled by transnational capital. Therefore, we need to fight against transnational capital to stop privatization. It is very difficult for a country to struggle against them and global solidarity of labor movement and people’s movement is required to act together.
Transnational capital wants to control each government as well as IMF and World Bank. The struggle against privatization and transnational capital is not only a struggle against government of each country, but also a struggle against government of capitals. Therefore, labor and people’s movement in each country is important. Victory against each country will result in victory against IFM and World Bank, and victory against transnational capital, eventually.
Korean labor movement is now having a big challenge like other countries in Europe, especially in Germany. The big challenge is because of neo-liberalism. Neo-liberalistic restructuring resulted in division of workers into regular and irregular workers, which damaged strong solidarity in labor movement. But, we found a solution to overcome this challenge from struggle against privatization. When labor movement leads strong struggle in preventing privatization, I am confident that we can find a new opening in our people’s movement.
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