Anti-union repression

80,000 precarious workers gathered in the KCTU’s national workers rally for abolishment of the recent revision of Minimum Wage Act and precarious works. For the last one year under the Moon government, no progress has made in terms of trade union rights and regularization of precarious jobs.

SI Cobas expresses its outrage and condemnation of the arrest of Yang Kyung-soo, leader of the Korean trade union KCTU, aimed at preventing the general strike of 20 October in preparation. The pretext: he organised a demonstration on 3 July in Seoul with 4,701 (according to the police count) participants (with masks and social distancing), which was not authorised under the pretext of Covid. Only three of the participants in the demonstration later tested positive to Covid. On 2 September, dozens of policemen surrounded the union headquarters before dawn to arrest Yang.

Everywhere in the world, even in Italy, the governments of the bosses have used and continue to use the Covid-19 pandemic to prevent or restrict the right of workers to meet, demonstrate and strike, and to hit combative trade unions with hundreds of fines and complaints. SI Cobas replies that “if we can work, we can also strike, meet and march”, while respecting the anti Covid rules”. But the arrest of the Korean trade union leader is a very serious political fact, an attack on the trade union organisation and the one million workers who are members of the KCTU, and an attack on their freedom to strike, because the aim is to prevent the general strike of 20 October against the government. SI Cobas suffered a similar attack with the arrest of its national coordinator Aldo Milani in 2017 on the basis of a judicial and police set-up, and hundreds of charges against workers and organisers for strikes, but Korea has a special history of anti-union repression.

Continua a leggere