[짬] Park Yong-seok, former director of the Democratic Labor Research Institute, published a 35-year history of the public sector labor movement
Park Yong-seok, former director of the Policy Research Institute of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (currently director of the Democratic Labor Research Institute), said, “The habit of collecting data allowed me to publish a book.” Senior Reporter Lee Chang-gon
As workers in the so-called ‘public sector’, including railways and subways, public hospitals, energy, health insurance, and pensions, continue joint strikes sequentially from the 14th of this month to November, their ‘struggle and organization’ is covered in a massive volume of over 938 pages. The book ‘History of the Public Sector Labor Movement Since 1987’, which records 35 years of development, is attracting renewed attention both inside and outside the labor world. The person who published this heavy and thick ‘brick book’ is Park Yong-seok, former director of the Korea Confederation of Trade Unions’ Affiliated Policy Research Institute (currently director of the Korea Democratic Labor Institute), a representative ‘policy expert’ of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions. He said, “The history of the public sector democratic union movement is a history of resistance against marketization and a persistent struggle to expand or maintain publicness and labor rights,” and added, “It is rough and lacking in many ways, but looking back on this history, I hope that it will continue in a more progressive way.” “I decided to publish the book from my heart,” he said. This book is not just a record of the past. It also presents strategies and practical tasks for the current public sector labor movement, such as how ‘organized labor’ should counter the Yoon Seok-yeol government’s market fundamentalist policy stance, such as labor oppression and public sector marketization. The history of the public sector labor movement recorded by former director Park, who compiled meaningful facts from the numerous notebooks, notepads, files, and diskettes that he had accumulated without throwing them away, is in fact his own labor movement journey. Starting as Secretary General of the Korea Consumer Agency Labor Union in 1988, former President Park served as the Chairman of the Unit Union, Chairman of the Small and Medium Business Union (National Research Professional Union), Vice Chairman of the Public Federation of Korea, Secretary General of the Public Transport Federation, and Head of the Public Institution Business Division of the Public Transport Union. For four years from 2018 to July of last year, he served as the head of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions Policy Research Institute and was evaluated as having enabled the research institute to serve as a de facto think tank for the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions. I recently met former Director Park at a cafe in Seoul and had a chat.
Park Yong-seok, former head of the Korea Confederation of Trade Unions Policy Research Institute, explains the book at a book launch event held at a cafe in Jeong-dong, Seoul on July 7, immediately after the book was published. Provided by Park Joo-dong, Secretary General of Ieum Sharing Union
Former Director Park summarized his book as “a rough summary of the public sector labor movement that has unfolded since 1987.” He continued, “The story focuses on how public sector unions fought against the oppression of labor rights and marketization of the public sector in our society, and how they practiced national solidarity and unity among democratic unions.” As he said, the book contains the history of organizational development and struggle through which the Public Federation of Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, of which he was a member, developed into today’s public transport union, as well as the civil service union, Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union, health and medical union, and non-regular worker movements in the public sector. . Although only a few volumes of comprehensive history of the Korean labor movement have been published, this is the first book that provides a clear view of the history of the public sector labor movement. The public sector includes administrative agencies that establish policies, such as the government and local governments, and public agencies that provide public services. As of December 2021, according to Statistics Korea, there are 2,839,000 people employed in this sector, or 10.5% of the total employed. What significance does the public sector labor movement have in the history of the Korean labor movement? Former Director Park said, “The public sector labor movement is given the fundamental task of expanding and maintaining publicness,” and “The history of the public sector labor movement is that successive governments suppressed labor rights in the name of economic development and promoted the revitalization of the market economy. “It can only be a history of resistance against the push for service marketization,” he said. The first article on the public sector labor movement
Focusing on practicing national solidarity and unity
“The public sector labor movement needs great unity.
“Change in government policy through offensive struggle,” following the labor movement since 1988
He served as director of the Korea Confederation of Trade Unions research institute for four years and said, “The significance of the public sector labor movement is that it has led the expansion of overall basic labor rights and welfare public services through such struggles.” He added that it is precisely because of this nature of the public sector labor movement that they have gone on three joint strikes in succession until February. The argument is that “the Yoon Seok-yeol government is reducing public services and retreating democracy through marketization policies in the public sector, driven by anachronistic market fundamentalism,” and “the public sector labor movement has no choice but to fight against this.” However, he said, “Looking back at past history, the public sector labor movement now needs a change in strategy that can further elevate the quality of the movement to expand the public nature of society.” These include the greater unity of the public sector labor movement, the strengthening of the industrial union movement beyond the corporate system, the strengthening of the social solidarity movement, the practice of class solidarity between regular and irregular workers, and innovation in the organizational management of public institutions. At the same time, he did not hesitate to suggest that “we must now transition from a passive resistance struggle to an offensive struggle for change in government policy.” He further emphasized, “The labor movement needs to go beyond the struggle on current issues and engage in a struggle to change the unstable social and economic system, such as low birth rate and aging population, climate crisis, geopolitical confrontation around the Korean Peninsula, and employment crisis.” His book, which chronologically surveys the labor movement from before 1987 to recent years in a total of 10 chapters, also contains controversial parts. This is especially true of the passages related to ‘the failure of the Moon Jae-in administration’s demarketization experiment’ and ‘social dialogue’ described in Chapter 9 of the book, which is said to have been “written with the readiness to be criticized.” In his book, he said, “The Moon Jae-in administration’s public sector policy shift failed to lead to the eradication of the deep-rooted evils of privatization and marketization, causing as much disappointment as expected, and the discussion on social dialogue strategies revived after 15 years also failed to participate in the (Korea Confederation of Trade Unions) Economic and Labor Committee. And the Corona crisis, the one-point labor-management-government agreement was rejected, effectively resulting in failure,” he wrote. When asked, “Do you have any regrets after the publication of the book?” he pointed out that the major limitation of this book is that “it does not properly include the labor movement in the public sector of the Federation of Korean Trade Unions,” and then added, “If I have the opportunity in the future, I will organize it by integrating the public sector labor movement of the two major trade unions.” “I want to do it,” he said. When asked about the reaction of those around him after the publication of the book, former Director Park said, “I received a lot of questions from people around me about how I was able to record so many facts in detail.” He added, “Because I was working on policy projects, I habitually secured a lot of data and memos.” “It was a great help,” he said. In relation to this, he told an anecdote. He said that the day when the public federation or Korean Confederation of Trade Unions he worked for cleaned their offices was a day when he secured valuable data. When these “higher organizations” clean up, they throw away a lot of materials, and the materials they collect have become valuable materials for organizing the history of the movement. Senior Reporter Lee Chang-gon goni@hani.co.kr
2023-09-26 23:18:53
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