Overview 

This book retraces the historical evolution of the labor movement among large company employees in South Korea through the lens of major factory workers in Ulsan, a city at the forefront of labor activism in the country. 

A Look at Capital's Grip on Labor In and Out of Factory Doors and the Making of the Working Class at Major Factories in Ulsan

Analyzing the Lives, Consciousness, and Labor Movements of Workers at Major Factories in Ulsan Since the Great Workers' Struggle of 1987

Ulsan, as the country’s foremost manufacturing hub, has always been at the center of the labor movement in South Korea. Using this industrial city as a case study, this book analyzes the lives, consciousness, and labor movements of workers at major factories in Ulsan from the perspective of working-class formation with the aims of shedding light on the evolution of South Korea’s working class over the past 35 years since the country’s democratization amid a period marked by rapid social change, and determining what the collective actions of workers today mean for the future. To achieve this, the author retraces the evolution of the working class by examining the experiences of workers in major Ulsan factories from the three distinct angles of class, group identity, and collective action. Furthermore, by extending its analysis of labor relations and labor movements beyond the workplace to include the personal experiences of workers and their families, this book provides an in-depth look into the lives of workers at major factories in Ulsan and their involvement in labor movements.

From Homogenization to Heterogenization of the Working Class and the Erosion of the Social Basis for Solidarity

Ulsan’s working class was formally established as a result of large-scale collective labor protests in 1987. In the 1990s, factory workers in Ulsan underwent a significant class-based transformation that can be summarized as a shift from "homogenization to heterogenization" which led to the erosion of the "social foundation for solidarity." The company-specific trade unions in Ulsan achieved class formation through vigorous militant mobilization focused on collective bargaining for wage increases. However, the pursuit of the "politics of wage increase" by these trade unions occurred alongside a broader trend of fragmentation and heterogenization across the entire working class. As a consequence, the outcome of major labor movements failed to strengthen worker solidarity, and instead, contributed to the weakening of the social basis for solidarity. By the 1990s, industrial workers in the Ulsan region had become so diverse that viewing them as a homogenous class was no longer possible.

A Class Standing at the Crossroads Between Fragmentation and Reform

Workers at major South Korean companies have exhibited an increasingly factional tendency of pursuing an exclusive understanding of their circumstances rather than attempting to foster a sense of solidarity with fellow workers who share the same class position. Therefore, the future of Korean industrial workers, and whether they opt to go down the path of class reform or class fragmentation, ultimately rests on their ability to establish a "new form of solidarity."

About author 

 Yoo Hyung-Geun is a professor in the Department of General Social Education at Pusan National University, where he teaches prospective teachers in the field of social studies. He graduated in Sociology from Seoul National University where he also went on to obtain a PhD. He has worked in various positions throughout his career, including being a researcher at the Korean Labor and Society Institute, a research professor at Ewha Womans University, head of the Korean Labor Institute’s academic committee, and a member of the Critical Sociological Association of Korea’s operating committee. Currently, he serves as an editorial board member for Economy and Society and the Korean Journal of Labor Studies, as well as an operating committee member for the Labor Forum Namu and as an advisory board member for the Busan Labor Rights Center. His academic specialization lies in sociology of labor, and he has conducted research in the fields of labor movements, labor-management relations, and labor rights education. Recently, he has taken an interest in comparing the organization of non-organized workers and the resurgence of labor movements worldwide, as well as the evolution of ownership and the history of democracy in the workplace.