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Book Review

Seung-Ho Kwon and Michael O'Donnell, The Chaebol and Labour in Korea: the Development of Management Strategy in Hyundai, Routledge, London and New York, 2001. pp. xiv + 217. £68 cloth.

This excellent book examines the central role played by the large conglomerates (chaebol) in Korean industrial relations from the 1940s onward. Using a combined case study and historical approach, it follows the chronology of Hyundai management's development, and the self-organisation of its workers.

The case study is well chosen. Both Hyundai management and the Hyundai independent trade unions have played a key role in Korean industrial relations in the past two decades. The Hyundai chaebol is one of Korea's largest, employing over 200,000 people. From the mid-1980s Hyundai trade unions were central to the re-emergence of independent trade unionism in Korea. The results of strikes and collective bargaining at Hyundai set the benchmark for national wage movements (much as the metalworkers' unions in Australia did in the 1970s). The Hyundai Group Trade Union Association took a central role in the national trade union movement in 1993, and Hyundai unionists assisted in the formation of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions in 1995. In 1999 the Democratic Labour Party was founded with the support of the Hyundai unions.

Kwon and O'Donnell do not simply add empirical detail to existing knowledge of Korean industrial relations. Instead, they argue that most analyses have underestimated the central role of the chaebol, emphasising instead the dominant role of the state. These analyses have focussed on how the authoritarian corporatist approach of the Korean state suppressed workers' resistance and trade union organisation. Kwon and O'Donnell show, however, that while the chaebol were the main vehicle for Korea's rapid state-directed industrialisation, they were not simply reliant on state repression of worker militancy to control their workforce. In addition, corporations like Hyundai adopted their own militaristic forms of labour control, and it was these (as well as state repression) which fuelled the re-emergence of genuine independent trade unions on a mass scale from 1987.

Importantly, they also want to emphasise the importance of the earlier period of independent union organisation in the 1970s in laying the basis for the explosion of unionism in the mid-1980s. 'The book demonstrates that its re-emergence was not a sudden phenomenon and that militant trade unionism was a feature of Korean industrial relations from the 1940s' (p.2).

The initial organisation was labour study groups of five to ten workers in a single workplace, which distributed anonymous leaflets, or wrote slogans about workplace organisation and resistance on washroom walls. This was during the 1970s when Hyundai management practices emphasised 'speed-up, authoritarian supervision and minimal job security' (p.85). These practices gave rise to a growing number of industrial accidents in the early 1970s. For example, in the first half of 1974 there were 1,566 industrial accidents in Hyundai Heavy Industry's dry-docks, in which 26 workers were killed.

There was a major strike in the shipyards in September 1974. The three day strike achieved national significance because it became emblematic of wider working-class concerns with the way in which Korea's rapid industrialisation had resulted in low wages and speed-up for workers, while enriching their superiors.

Another common feature was the centrality of what might be called the strike for dignity. The 1974 strike at the shipyard began when a manager replied insultingly to production workers' questions about work re-organisation.

In Hyundai's construction division, a young manager physically assaulted an older truck driver on 13 March 1977 so severely that he was hospitalised. The other workers went on strike in protest at this action, demanding a public apology.

Drawing on case study material such as this, Kwon and O'Donnell outline a number of factors that created the pre-conditions for large-scale worker militancy in the 1980s: surviving elements of the earlier underground resistance, the concentration of large numbers of workers in regional industrial estates, the repressive policies of the state, the chaebol's own management strategies, the shift from light to heavy industries, and the change in the political environment due to the successes of the democracy movement in the 1980s.

State control of the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU) in the 1970s and 1980s still provided a major constraint on this militancy, however. The book clearly draws out the contrast between independent unions and those sponsored by the company: one advocated freedom of speech, equitable distribution of the means of production, freedom of association, the right to strike, and opposed the undemocratic concentration of economic power in the hands of the chaebol. Leaders of the company unions adopted a co-operative approach to management, arguing that workers' demands could only be secured by ensuring the ongoing prosperity of the firm.

When the union movement re-emerged independent of the FKTU, and on a larger scale, in Hyundai in 1987, demands ranged from the abolition of hair length regulations to the removal of discriminatory employment practices. Protests in this tumultuous period commonly took the form of 'riots and aggressive street rallies' (p.117). They were met by police violence against strikers — 4,200 strikers at the shipyards were confronted by 1,200 police, who arrested 200 of them and charged 18 with rioting and hampering the police.

About half of the book focuses on the strategies that Hyundai management employed in response to the rapid growth of the independent trade union movement from mid-1987. These included strong-arm tactics to disrupt their activities and the promotion of company sponsored unions, relocation of production away from the Ulsan Industrial Estate, and a range of welfare facilities for production workers.

From 1987 until the early 1990s, management attempts to deal with the unions extended to physically intimidating and sacking union activists, placing them under daily surveillance, and the use of a blacklist available to management and the police. Dozens of union militants were physically injured in conflicts with Hyundai security guards. At the same time, management encouraged company-sponsored trade unionists to take over control of independent unions through backing them in presidential elections. Use of the police to arrest and thereby remove leading activists from bargaining was also a favoured tactic to force through unpopular enterprise agreements. But by the late 1990s state and company repression of independent unions had declined markedly, indicating the success of the unions, and a decision by management and government to find other ways to undermine worker organisation.

The conflict between workers and employers is ongoing. This history has much to offer those who want to understand how to fight effectively. It provides a convincing argument that challenges or at least expands much of the previous analysis of these events, but at the same time is an extremely accessible introduction to anyone wanting to understand a very inspiring period of labour history.


University of New South Wales	DIANE FIELDES

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