아시아 태평양 노동자소통

                            (Rev) Jang Chang Weon 22nd October 2005

Greetings to you from South Korea.

Thank you very much to Gwynnyth Evans and AAWL for organising this event, and providing the opportunity for us to meet.

Thank you for the invitation to this Open Day.

The situation of workers in the Asia Pacific Region is extremely difficult, even to the extent of workers being killed by the actions of imperialist capital.

Thirteen workers from Korean APWSL visited the Philippines in August this year and met with the President of the Nestle Trade Union who shared with us the details of their struggle for justice.

Within a month of returning to Korea we were devastated to hear the news that he had been killed.

Among our purposes for visiting had been to join an international protest against the killing of farmers and students in the Philippines in November 2004.

Already this year in Korea at least 4 workers have suicided in protest to draw attention to the desperate struggle of their comrades.

These include workers dismissed for their trade union activism and casual workers who are fighting for their right to organise.

And this is occurring in countries with an active trade union movement, which is able to tell the story to the world. In some other parts of Asia and the Pacific workers are dying but their story is not even heard.

In the midst of this situation, however, there are many signs of hope.

Jailed trade unionists from Samsung in Korea are on hunger strike demanding the recognition of their trade union; Korean truck drivers are now on strike over the huge debts they are carrying because they are not paid adequately; 3000 Korean farmers have committed to go to Hong Kong for the protests against the WTO in December this year.

Another one of those signs of hope is this APWSL meeting as we make plans for our activities for solidarity and struggle across the region, so that we can work together to overcome violence against workers, struggle for secure and fulfilling lives for workers and create a new world.

In 2004 in Mumbai we held an APWSL representatives special meeting and made a new commitment to gather our strength at the grassroots and work together in solidarity to overcome capital and make a new world for workers. In June this year at our APWSL general meeting in Malaysia we formally made a new start.

APWSL reasserted our commitment to exist as a network to link trade union and labour activists in Asia Pacific to:

1) Promote democratic, independent, genuine and pro-worker trade unionism

1) Promote international worker solidarity especially at the grass roots level

1) Promote gender equality in is own work and the wider trade union movement

1) Promote workers’ and other human rights

This weekend we are putting our minds to the task of making our organising stronger.

I believe what we need to do is bring together our strengths. We need to share with each other the stories of international solidarity activities each country is engaged in, and identify the best methods to share with the labour movements in our countries.

These should be promoted as models for others to follow, in order to build our solidarity across Asia and the Pacific.

For example, Korean Textile Union Federation representatives have visited Indonesia and after visiting many areas decided to develop a partnership with the Suraba regional union.

They have formalised this partnership and made written commitments to each other to build solidarity. This kind of partnership can be replicated by other unions and labour movement groups.

We have established a Migrant Workers Union in Korea. The Nepalese leadership within the Migrant Workers Union are not only organising and working on issues for migrant workers in Korea but are also protesting and working closely in solidarity with the Nepalese APWSL in the struggle for democracy in Nepal.

On May Day last year APWSL representatives from Korean and Nepal met and made a commitment to build solidarity around these issues.

We must also discuss specific issues and how they impact on each of our countries. The migrant workers issue mentioned here is one of them.

In addition to the use of migrant workers, capitalists are also increasing the use of casual workers to break down union strength and reduce wages. Unlike Australia, casual workers in Korea are paid only one third or one quarter of the wages of permanent workers. Until 1998 Korean workers expected to have a job for life.

Since the intervention of the IMF during the 1998 economic crisis in Korea and Asia, job security has dramatically reduced. Permanent workers have been sacked and offered casual employment, and new employees are only offered casual employment in many workplaces. In the space of 7 years from 1998 to now casual workers have risen to 60% of the Korean workforce. But they still only represent 10% of unionised workers and are generally from large corporations.

They continue to struggle for their right to unionise. For the Korean community the issue of casualisation of the workforce, and the associated drop in living standards and security, is the single biggest social issue.

Building international solidarity around the struggles for casual workers is an important part of the future work of APWSL. Communication, education and solidarity struggles can increase the community’s recognition of this issue and bring about changes.

One of the questions APWSL faces is how do we build our international solidarity with limited resources. The internet is a significant tool to help build our closeness and our communication. In addition I believe we can increasingly use opportunities created by international protests like anti-APEC and anti-WTO to get together.

Many APWSL members are attending these events anyway, and we can organise to gather for APWSL business while we are together, to meet and strengthen our activities.

I would like to make my final comments about issues of communication and technology. Recently a Korean worker applied for Workers Compensation for the stress he was experiencing as a result of the constant monitoring of his work by video cameras around his workplace. His application was refused.

With the increase in technology we live in an age of potential constant monitoring 24 hours a day. This technology can be our enemy, invading our privacy and breaching our human rights. But we can also use this revolution in media and technology as a tool for our labour revolution.

For 2 years APWSL has discussed the development of a website and last year Korea and Japan agreed to work on making this a reality. Today I would like to introduce you to laborasia.net as a tool to communicate about our labour struggles, labor cultural activities and solidarity.

If you look up at the screen you can see a demonstration of what is on the site.

- Members from different countries in Asia can use this website in their respective languages

- http://laborasia.net can be used for both online and offline for communication about the meetings, news, solidarity activities and so on

- we can share the information about each country's news, data, photos, videoa and so on, in your own language which can be translated into the languages of other countries in Asia - such as English, Korean,Indonasian, Hindi, Nepali, Sinhali, Tamil, and so on.

- All those who have signed in to this webmaster will be members of this site

- Each country will have one or two people as part of the webmaster and these people will hold an offline conference or meeting once or twice a year.

- We support the building up of laboutnet sites of all countries in Asia and their consolidation with the Asialabornet.

Asia Pacific Workers Solidarity Link invites the webmaster from each country in Asia to translate the news and information into their own language for the benefit of the local labor movements.

We are all engaged in the Fight for Workers Rights. In Korea we say

“Dan-Kyol! Too Jeng! Seung Nee!”

– United!! We Struggle!! For Victory!!!!

Thank you for this opportunity to speak with you.