A New Attempt At Organizing Irregular Workers In Korea :Examining The Activities Of The Korean Women's Trade Union

It is difficult to organize irregular workers, especially female irregular workers in Korea, as many of them are employed by small enterprises, change their jobs frequently and enter and leave the labor market according to economic fluctuations. Therefore the Korean Women’s Trade Union (KWTU) has tried to build a new model of a trade union and a new idea of a labor movement which are different from the enterprise unions for male regular workers in order to organize female irregular workers who have been entirely excluded from the protection of labor laws, the welfare system and the trade union. While the enterprise unions have concentrated on protecting employment and improving working conditions of the union members at each workplace, the KWTU has been an independent women’s trade union which any working woman can join by herself without distinction of industry, occupation or region, or whether she is unemployed or not beyond the enterprise, and performed various activities. In this presentation, we consider the activities of the KWTU as well as its implications.