hankyoreh

after the court upheld the legality of Ssangyong Motor’s 2009 layoffs

The Supreme Court ruling on Nov. 13 upholding the legality of Ssangyong Motor’s 2009 layoffs comes as a door slammed in the face of former workers who have spent the last five years hoping to return to their jobs. It more or less ends any hopes for a solution in the courts. After trying negotiations with the company, and even protests in front of Deoksu Palace in central Seoul and the Ssangyong factory to demand a parliamentary investigation, laid-off workers have few options left. Many are now saying it‘s time for politicians and the National Assembly to step in and try to solve the situation.

The ruling comes 44 years to the day after Jeon Tae-il, a textile worker at Seoul’s Dongdaemun Market, set himself on fire after declaring, “We are not machines.”

The response from Kim Tae-wook, an attorney who represented the Ssangyong workers in their lawsuit, was scathing.

“The Supreme Court’s decision that the layoffs were justifiable can only be read one way: they’re giving up any kind of controls over layoffs,” he said.

Kim added that he plans to review the grounds for the ruling closely and “fight my hardest on anything that might be contested in the court hearing the remand.”

This could mean presenting more evidence of the lack of justification for the 2009 layoffs when Seoul High Court hears the case again, and arguing that the layoffs were in violation of an employment security agreement between Ssangyong and its workers at the time.

But it remains unclear whether this line of reasoning can actually turn the tide after the Supreme Court‘s decision on the significant issues raised so far.

Perhaps the most lasting mental and emotional traumas from the five-year-long layoff battle leading up to the ruling are memories of a police action against protestors in Aug. 2009 - and the 25 lives lost since the mass layoffs.

The police action was taken to break up a 77-day-long factory occupation by workers protesting the layoffs. A riot police team came in through the roof and used clubs against workers, in an event that has become a tragic symbol of the suppressions used against labor since the layoff system was introduced to the Labor Standards Act in 1998 at the request of global financial businesses.

The beginnings of the Ssangyong layoff situation can be traced back to the global financial crisis that erupted in 2008. Suffering a liquidity crunch amid declining sales and financer skittishness, Ssangyong received orders in Feb. 2009 to initiate court rehabilitation proceedings. Two months later, the union was notified that 2,646 workers were being let go.

The laid-off workers have struggled ever since. Businesses in Pyeongtaek have shied away from hiring former Ssangyong workers, forcing them to travel the country looking for places to hire themselves out.

Deserted by their former employers and struggling to survive, members of the Korean Metal Workers’ Union Ssangyong chapter have begun dropping like flies. The death of union member surnamed Jeon last April brought the total of layoff victims and family members who have lost their lives to suicide or illness over the past five years to twenty-five. Meanwhile, the company has filed suit to claim damages and seize property from the workers. In total, courts have ordered the layoff victims to pay some 4.7 billion won (US$4.3 million).

Last year, union chapter president Han Sang-gyun and other workers scaled an electricity transmission tower in front of Ssangyong‘s factory in Pyeongtaek for a 171-day-long protest that lasted until May. Workers also camped out in front of Deoksu Palace near Seoul City Hall for a long struggle to demand a societal solution. Other shows of solidarity came with the Hope Buses and a street mass in front of Deoksu Palace. But the company remained unreceptive, and police eventually busted the Deoksu Palace protest site, forcing out the protestors and putting in a garden.

Politicians have gone back and forth with their support. Ahead of the 2012 presidential elections, Saenuri Party (NFP) lawmakers on the National Assembly Environment and Labor Committee, and even then-election headquarters chief Kim Moo-sung (now party leader) and then-leader Hwang Woo-yea (now Minister of Education) pledged a parliamentary audit to investigate the layoffs if their candidate Park Geun-hye was elected. Park was elected in December 2012, but the politicians reversed course the following year and began opposing the audit.

Many are saying a political solution remains the only option for the workers after the Supreme Court closed the door on a legal answer.

“In a place like South Korea where corporate information isn’t made fully available to workers, there have been enough issues with Ssangyong for workers to put up a fight on their own,” said Kim Jong-jin, director research for the Korea Labour & Society Institute. “But for the 90% of workers who aren‘t even organized, they’ve got no choice but to do business‘s bidding.”

“If social bodies like the Tripartite Commission (between labor, management and government) aren’t working, it‘s time for the National Assembly to show its political strength by somehow getting Ssangyong to take up the workers who lost their jobs,” Kim added.

By Jeon Jong-hwi, staff reporter

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