hankyoreh

Yoosung workers watch as Yu Si-yeong

“The defendant, Yu Si-yeong, is sentenced to prison, and since he is believed to be a flight risk, he will be taken into legal custody.”

It was the morning of Feb. 17, at courtroom no. 1 at the Cheonan branch of the Daejeon District Court, located in the Shinbu neighborhood of this city in South Chungcheong Province. When the judge, who had been reading his written judgment for about thirty minutes, sentenced Yu Si-yeong, chairman of Yoosung Enterprise, to one year and six months in prison, the tension in the air of the courtroom was broken by cheering and clapping.

After the sentencing was over, more than 200 members of the Yoosung Enterprise chapter of the Korean Metal Workers’ Union (KMWU) who were in and near the crowded courtroom watched Yu being placed in the police van. “They kept telling us we were wrong, but finally they said [the company managers] were wrong,” said one female member of the Yoosung Asan chapter of the union.

Events at Yoosung Enterprise, which supplies parts to the Hyundai Motor Company, are remembered as a case study in union busting. According to the judgment on Feb. 17, prior to the introduction of multiple labor unions in July 2011 (before that companies all had only one union each), Yoosung Enterprise, following the advice of labor law firm Creative Consulting, decided to take the lead in establishing a second union that would serve the company’s interest and to provide that union with support. This was part of Yoosung Enterprise’s plan to undermine the KMWU’s Yoosung Yeongdong and Yoosung Asan chapters, which had called for a continuous weekly two-shift system.

When the labor union initiated a strike, the company moved to shut down the workplace on May 18, 2011, and used hired goons to remove union members from the factory, resulting in multiple injuries. The union declared its willingness to return to work in July 2011, but the company prevented it from doing so by keeping the workplace shut for more than a month. In the meantime, the company engineered the establishment of a second labor union and began to discriminate between members of the KMWU chapter and members of the second labor union. After union members returned to the job, 27 of them were fired.

After documents prepared by Creative Consulting were made public by the National Assembly in September of the following year, the union filed charges against Yoosung Enterprise for inappropriate labor action, but in Dec. 2013, the prosecutors treated Yu, the chairman, with leniency by only bringing a very small number of charges against him and by ignoring the charges of union busting connected with Creative Consulting. The union asked Daejeon High Court to rectify the prosecutors’ omission, and the trial about union busting charges began in earnest in December of the following year, when the court ordered the prosecutors to file related charges. After the union asked the court to invalidate the second union, Seoul Central District Court ruled in Apr. 2016 that the second union was invalid because it had been established under the company’s lead. But because of repeated delays in criminal prosecution of the company managers behind the union busting, the managers were not found guilty on the majority of the charges filed by the union until the ruling on Feb. 17.

Over the past six years, the minds and bodies of the union members have been broken. Even now, 18 of the terminated workers have been unable to return to the job. More than 300 KMWU chapter members who are at the workplace were summoned before the company’s disciplinary committee and had to face 1,300 legal complaints and lawsuits because of their confrontations with company managers and the second labor union. Seven of the KMWU chapter members are suffering from depression and other psychological disorders that have been recognized as workplace-related conditions by the Korea Workers’ and Compensation Welfare Service. On Mar. 17, 2016, Han Gwang-ho, a union member, ended his own life before the company could take disciplinary action against him.

Watching Yu being taken to jail after the trial, Hong Wan-gyu, a union member, shouted through his sobs, “Bring back our Gwang-ho!” “It’s been so heartbreaking to see union members wondering why they have to endure this kind of life because of the company’s repressive tactics. We still haven’t been able to hold a funeral for Gwang-ho, so I guess I should raise a glass to his funeral portrait,” Hong said.

“What the judge read for thirty minutes in the ruling was our suffering over the past six years. I earnestly want to return to the way things were before the union-busting scheme. To do that, the company needs to make an effort by offering a sincere apology to the deceased martyr Han Gwang-ho, punishing the responsible parties and restoring the collective agreement,” said Kim Seong-min, head of the Yoosung Yeongdong union chapter, on Feb. 17, as he wept in his tattered mourning garb.

By Park Tae-woo, staff reporter in Cheonan

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