Dispatch, or irregular, workers have zero rights and can be arbitrarily fired for any reason at the drop of a hat.  Management’s strategy to maintain a constant level of fear at the plant was to fire one dispatch worker every week.  The workers referred to this as management’s “keeping the waters clean”—keeping everyone too terrified to even think of asking for their basic rights.

Women who could not stay for overtime were fired.  Workers who asked for a sick day were terminated.  When one woman who was feeling ill asked her line supervisor if she could go home, she was told:  “Fine, go home, rest, and never come back again.” Another woman, who had suffered an occupational injury at work and asked to  be temporarily moved to another department, was fired on the spot.  Workers who arrived late or asked to be allowed to leave “early”—after the regular eight-hour shift—were fired.  One woman, whose daughter was in a car accident earlier in the day, dared not leave work until 9:00 p.m. for fear of being fired.  Anyone who talked back to a manager would be fired.  Indeed, if a line supervisor did not like the looks of one of the women, she was fired.

Long grueling hours:

The routine shift for production line workers at the Kiryung factory was 13 to 14 hours a day, from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. six days a week.  (The workers were allowed 40 minutes for lunch, 30 minutes for supper at 5:00 p.m. and two ten-minute breaks, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.)  When there were pressing orders for Sirius Satelite radios, the women would work seven days a week, sometimes going for up to three months without a single day off.  Before shipments to the U.S., dispatch workers also had to work some all-night shifts, which varied from line to line, but averaged two or three nights a month.  After working all day and through the night, the women still had to report at 8:00 a.m. the following morning to work another 13 to 14-hour shift before being allowed to go home to rest.  Some of these all-night shifts actually stretched out to 37 or 38 hours of work.

The workers report being required to remain for 100 or 120 hours of overtime a month.

Not only did the dispatch workers have to work at night and on weekends, they also had to work through summer vacations and even on the most important national holidays.  If there were orders to complete for the Sirius radios, they had to work.  This was true even during Korea’s most important holiday, Chuseok, the autumn harvest festival, when everyone travels home to their villages to be with their families and to honor their ancestors.  (The importance of the Chuseok holiday could be compared with our Christmas.)  It was a bitter experience for the women to be forced to work through this most important holiday.

The dispatch workers were often tired, exhausted, longing to rest and to spend more time with their families.  But they had no other choice than to work the long overtime hours management demanded.  If they refused, they would be fired.  Also, their regular wages were so low they could not survive without overtime.

Below-subsistence Wages:

“We only work, worked like slaves for just 641,850 won [less than $630] a month.”

Dispatch workers did the exact same work as the full time employees—working right next to one another on the assembly line—yet they earned just about half the wages the regular worker received.

Dispatch workers earned 641,850 Korean won a month, or just $629.96.  (In 2005, there were 1,023.75 won to $1.00 U.S.)

Dispatch Workers’ Wages

$3.62 an hour
$144.68 a week (40 hours)
$626.96 a month
$7,523.52 a year

Dispatch workers were essentially being paid the minimum wage in South Korea, which does not even come close to meeting basic subsistence level needs.  The cost of living in Seoul where the Kiryung factory is located is at least as high, if not higher, as that of New York City.  Certainly no one could survive in New York on $3.62 an hour wages, just as they could not make ends meet in Seoul.  Despite the long overtime hours, dispatch workers and their families could only afford rice and kimchee, pickled cabbage, as their main staples.  Their families also struggled to meet basic tuition costs to send their children to primary school.

There are 8.6 million dispatch workers in South Korea who are struggling to survive as third class citizens with no rights.  This makes the long struggle of the brave women workers at the Kiryung factory all the more critical.

Not only long hours and no rights—the work was also done at a grueling pace:

For production line workers assembling Sirius Satellite Radios, the pace was fast and grueling.  Production goals were set excessively high and supervisors put constant pressure on the women.  The pace was so frantic workers dared not lift their heads and no one talked.  Workers could not even use the bathroom.  If they did, the work would simply pile up around them in their brief absence.  The women tried to time their going to the bathroom to the ten minute breaks in the morning and afternoon.  The women had to learn to “hold their bladders,” but there were times they “leaked a little.” Also, if they went to the bathroom too often, they could be fired.

Striking workers face down hired thugs at the Kiryung gate

The Women Fight Back:

The dispatch workers had had enough, and they decided to fight back.  They organized a local union at the Kiryung Factory and affiliated to South Korea’s largest union, the progressive Korean Metal Workers Union (KMWU), which has 150,000 members.

As soon as the workers organized their union, on July 5, 2005, management threatened to fire every union member who had worked at the factory for less than a year, which was the majority of the production line workers—(given management’s practice of firing workers every week to “keep the waters clean”).

Not waiting to be fired, the workers went out on strike at 10:00 a.m. on August 24, 2005.

An Amazing Struggle Begins:

For 55 days the workers occupied the Kiryung factory, carrying out a sit-down strike between two assembly lines.  The 200 strikers remained in the factory 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  The Korean Metal Workers Union and other supporters brought food to the workers.

Management immediately started threatening the workers, saying that the Sirius Radio Network in the United States was demanding that Kiryung relocate its production to China in order to cut costs.  Either way, the striking workers were doomed, management told them.  (A short time later, Kiryung did purchase land in China, building a factory which opened in the summer of 2007.  Eighty percent of Kiryung’s production of Sirius Satellite radios are now produced in China.  Kiryung uses five subcontract factories in South Korea to produce the other 20 percent of Sirius’s orders.)

On October 17, 2005 riot police stormed the factory, violently driving the striking workers outside.  The strikers immediately took over the area in front of the factory’s main gates and set up a tent city.  To date, the workers have continued their strike for going on 1,160 days!

Management hired 60 to 70 thugs to terrorize the strikers, who the women referred to as “meatheads” and “goons.”  The thugs assaulted the striking women, even strangling and kneeling on top of them.  Reportedly management pays these goons $200 a day, which is all the more incredible given that the women earned just $630 a month to make the Sirius Satellite radios!

Management also organized its regular, full-time male workers into a “We love Kiryung Electric Group,” and they also assaulted the striking workers.  During the sit-down strike, these male workers ran through the factory kicking, stomping on and running over the women.

 The all-male “We Love Kiryung Electronics” goon squad

Management increased the height of its factory walls and installed barbed wire and surveillance cameras both inside and outside the factory.  Surveillance cameras inside monitored the areas around the coffee machine, the locker room and bathrooms.  Sliding metal gates were installed inside the factory to control the flow of people should the strikers ever find their way inside the plant again.

Management also filed court suits against 64 of the strikers, claiming their sit-down strike obstructed factory business and is seeking $4.3 million (U.S.) in damages for the strike.  (The courts found that the company was vastly over-exaggerating its losses. Obstruction of business is a criminal offense in South Korea, punishable by up to five years in prison.  Both the local union president and the vice president spent time in prison for obstructing business.)

Despite constant attacks over the course of three long years, the mostly women strikers never gave in.  For the last 1,160 days they have organized a picket line in front of the factory gate every morning and a candle-light vigil each night.  The workers have never missed a single day!  Over 1,040 supporters joined a collective one-day hunger strike demanding that the president of Korea step forward to resolve the crisis at Kiryung.  On June 10, 2008, ten unionists went on a hunger strike.  The chair of the Kiryung union, Ms. So-yeon Kim, continued her hunger strike for 94 days before being hospitalized, seriously weakened, with an irregular heartbeat and lung function.

Kiryung worker-organized 1040 person hunger strike

For more than three years, the striking workers at  the Kiryung factory have fought for justice, respect for fundamental labor rights and an end to the exploitation of dispatch workers, who have been stripped of their rights.  On October 15—the very day that a delegation of striking workers and union supporters was to leave for the United States to confront Sirius Radio and seek the support of the American people—the goons again attacked the picket line in front of the factory gate, tearing down the strikers’ tents. 

The striking women and men have shown enormous courage and resolve.  Despite constant attacks, the striking workers have already won some precedent-setting breakthroughs that could improve respect for labor rights across Asia.   The controversy surrounding the struggle at the Kiryung factory pushed the Korean Government to rule that the indefinite exploitation of dispatch workers is illegal and that the dispatch workers at the Kiryung factoryshould be rehired as full-time, regular workers.  Kiryung management refuses to do so, but the Korean Government continues to face significant pressure from the Korean Metal Workers Union (KMWU), the International Metal Workers Federation (IMF) and the U.N.’s International Labor Organization (ILO) to stop the illegal exploitation of dispatch workers.

Riot police violently rout the workers’ sit-down strike from inside the factory 

The Workers’ Demands

More than three years after being forced to strike, 32 Kiryung workers remain on the picket line fighting for respect for women’s and labor rights and an end to the exploitation of dispatch, or irregular, workers, who are stripped of their most basic rights.

• Immediate reinstatement of the 32 strikers, as permanent full-time employees at one of Kiryung Electronics sister factories, with no wage, hour or gender discrimination.

• The Kiryung Electronics factory should pay all back wages to these workers, along with compensation for the physical and emotional hardship suffered by the women over the course of the last three years of struggle.

If Kiryung management has the will and good faith to negotiate with the striking workers, this crisis can finally be positively resolved.