The Labor Unionists' Strategy for New Communication

- Different Information Changes the Ways of Struggle

We are labor reporters in Korea hosting workshop on 'The Strategy of the Common Members for New Communication' at The Second Seoul International LaborMedia. We deeply sympathized with your idea in the topic discussion at the first LaborMedia and your writings afterwards, and on the occasion of the workshop above we would like to extend a formal invitation to you to participate in the workshop as one of the presenters.

The topics of the presentation are as follows, and concerning our matter of interest, please refer to the introduction to our statement following this page.

The traditional labor movement is being institutionalized and turning rightist on an international scale.

Also the progressiveness of labor movement reached its limitations on a local scale. Diverse discussions and issue-raising on labor movement and communication are needed.

Do labor unions actually represent the common members?

Do labor unions really try to communicate with the common members?

Communication is not simply a matter of transmission and reception of information. Communication cannot not estimated by the degree of feedback of information. Dilemma of communication in labour unions. Crisis of labour unions' representativeness.

We are looking forward to a resolute and straightforward disclosure of your

insight into the cause of those circumstances and current situations.

In the winter of 1999, where are the members of the Korean Federation of

Trade Unions who fought in the field of struggle in the winter of 96-97 and

the summer of 98?

Under the circumstances that the ultranational capital are isolating and dividing them,

why don't they turn up in the cyber space, the another strategic space for new communication beyond the disrupted real world?

What is their reason to hesitate to appear?

What on earth is their reason not to try on-line?

Where are they?

1. Introduction

We remember two cases which activated the possibility of labourers' international solidarity on internet - the struggle of the harbor workers in Liverpool and general strike of KCTU in 1996-7.

Especially, during the KCTU's general strike, Korean workers came to have the first-hand experience of the encounter of real space and cyber space. The support to the strike in the cyber space which arose public opinions, stimulated the material struggle in the real space out of the cyber space.

These experiences confirmed their belief that the cyber space is not a closed circuit but an open space for workers' struggle. From that time, our expectation for 'New Communication of More Workers' in the cyber space has begun.

However, Peter Waterman in the topic discussion at '97 LaborMedia made a critical comment on KCTU and indirectly suggested the difficulties of new communication in Korean labour movement.

Focusing on political attitude as one of the conditions for new international communication, he argued "This event was certainly a marker on the road to a new communicative internationalism, or the communicating of a new internationalism. It should not, however, be mythologized. There were reminders that even if we were involved in a new kind of international social movement, many of us(particularly from outside Korea) were still the old kind of political people. The movement and event, moreover, will not necessarily be more than such. The militant KCTU looked ready to adopt a social-reformist posture if and when Korean capital and state were ready t adopt liberal-democratic ones.."

He continues "The internationalism of the KCTU has been, so far, one of seeking support for its national needs, not -as was admitted- of providing this, nor of working with others (also beyond the labour movement) for an alternative global civilization...(omitted)... And the response of the KCTU to the IMF's vicious neo-liberal impositions was one that could have been

produced by the reference to either globalisation or global solidarity. The saving grace is that these documents were made immediately available, in English, worldwide, on the Internet, thus making them a contribution to international discussion on how to confront neo-liberal globalization. The conference, however, provided a reminder that workers increasingly live in a world both universal and realm that the experience of even exotic others are increasingly relevant everywhere....(omitted)... Information opens the possibility of creating one of mutual learning..."

With an insight into the need for a new international solidarity and an importance of communication, he critically points out the attitude and its future direction of KCTU, which appealed for international support only for their internal purpose. He pays attention to values, ways of speech, styles as well as political attitudes related to the communication strategy mainly from the internationalist view point, and, however, he provides a guideline to comprehensive image of workers' communication. This also means that the new workers' communication is not completed only by using information technologies and cyber space.

Therefore, Peter Waterman's viewpoint on KCTU based on his experience of the first meeting is related not only to international solidarity but also to the way of communication with the common members. This seems to raise an issue of internal communication in general labour movement not confining to the problem of KCTU as the superior group.

It has been two years since then.

The interest in cyber space as a new media is dramatically increasing.

Lots of labour unions and workers' group as well as KCTU constructed CUG and opened their own homepages on Internet.

Nevertheless, in this stage, we are faced with two serious problems of 'absence of new communication' and 'absence of common members'. We do not consider it natural phenomena in the beginning, temporary recession against ultranational capital or inevitable limitation of institutionalized labour movement. We see it as the problems of power relationship in the Korean labour movement and the difference in communication strategies.

Now, there comes conflicts between the leaders' group and the common members in Korean labour movement with power relationship in internal communication. In addition, the difference in their visions of communication through new media causes discord in international unions, strategy of the common members and, as a whole, a consistent attitude. As a result, these problems seem intermingled.

For more elaborate analyses of these problems, we would like to examine ways of communication and flows of informations inside recent labor movement, in both real space and cyber space. Strike at Hyundai Motors in 1998 and other situations will be chosen as concrete cases.

However, Hyundai Motors' Strike itself is not the main concern, though it represents that kind of cases in that it went on as Peter Waterman had anticipated.

Reviewing the ways and the structure of communication through various media(meetings, hand-outs, communication) in the scene of strike, the characteristics and flows of the information, communication among the common members outside the official media, we are going toward the theme of the strategy for the common members' communication beyond the specific case and its medioscopic issue of Hyundai Motors' in Ulsan.

According to the way of production and communication of information and its resulting contents, labourers' struggle and action change enormously. Its result will have a decisive influence on the common members' life who tend to leave those matters to their representatives considering it someone else's business. Now, they are not in the position to say 'I don't know... they will handle it.", "I joined the meeting. What else do you want me to do?", "I can't afford to take care of it. I'm stuck to my working place."

Sometimes, their representatives act against them, which can be fatal. That is, they can be victimized themselves, unless they themselves become producers of information and that of communication strategy.

Information and communication... these are not a problem of high-tech nor abstruse concept but a break-through in survival strategies of the common members in the institutionalized labour movement.