Legal geographies of labour and postdemocracy: Reinforcing non‐standard work in South Korea

Abstract

This paper engages the literature on the legal geographies of labour and postdemocracy in order to examine the role of law in limiting the labour rights of non‐standard workers. To do so, it analyses the effects of civil suits for obstruction of business against workers and trade union activists in South Korea. First embraced by liberal administrations as an alternative to authoritarian forms of labour control, civil suits for obstruction of business have become a common feature of labour struggles since 2002 and have led to millions of dollars in damage claims and provisional seizure of assets being applied against workers for engaging in collective action. We argue that by treating many ordinary trade union practices as “threats of force” that obstruct business and are thus liable for compensation, the law has been an essential component in the creation of a postdemocratic mode of labour control: one in which many fundamental labour rights are officially recognised, unlike under authoritarian regimes, but undermined in practice by narrowly limiting workers’ ability to pursue lawful collective action.

Restructuring legal geography

“…We see this especially though not exclusively among those who are occasional rather than regular contributors to the field. For example, some scholars have examined the constitutive role that the law has played in the rolling out of neoliberalism and other conservative political-economic agendas, and in the fighting back against them (Boyer, 2006; Weller, 2007; Hubbard et al, 2009; Carr, 2010; Pendras, 2011; Hae, 2012; Martin and Pierce, 2013; Rutherford, 2013; Andrews and McCarthy, 2014; Niedt and Christophers, 2016; Doucette and Kang, 2017; Cullen et al, 2018). And others have explored the role of law in the management of the economic and social marginalization that has followed from these agendas (Mitchell, 1997, 1998; Herbert and Brown, 2006; Belina, 2007; Mitchell and Heynen, 2009; D.…”

Korean Suicide Protest as Anomic Response to Labour Disempowerment

“…Korea's neo-liberal economic order is deeply connected to the enduring power of the "chaebol-state complex", in which tight alliances between political and chaebol (corporate) elites dominate civic life, and legal rules tightly constrain the opportunities for organised labour to advance its interests (J-J. Choi, 2010;Doucette and Kang, 2018;Kang;). This profoundly worker-hostile legal environment is part of a political reality in which democratisation dynamics have waned since the 1987 upheaval, and economic elites have led a neo-liberalisation process that has exacerbated social polarisation while building a legal regime that substantially marginalises labour interests.…”

“…Choi 2010). Legal challenges include: restrictions on the right of broad sectors of workers (such as civil servants and teachers) to unionise or strike; a ban on "third party intervention" in labour disputes (for example, through solidarity strikes); the endurance of trade union "monopoly" unions sponsored by business management itself; severe criminal and civil penalties facing organisations and individuals who engage in labour actions not deemed justifiable by courts under Korea's exceptionally pro-business labour laws; and frequent mobilisation of overwhelming police force against labour actions (KCTU, 2009;ITUC, 2012;Doucette and Kang, 2018).…”

“…Strikes are also illegal if they are third-party sympathy strikes, if they involve important public services (such as rail transit), or if they are called in response to general government policy (such as cuts in social services, privatisation plans, pension cuts or new free trade policies), rather than directed at a specific business's actions. Strikes are also illegal if they are called by irregular, 1 non-unionised workers, if they are wildcat strikes of local union chapters without parent union approval, or if they are called before an employer has had adequate time to consider a collective bargaining proposal (Jang, 2004a;Doucette and Kang, 2018).…”

Labour geography III: Precarity, racial capitalisms and infrastructure

“…Other sub-disciplines, like tourism geographies, are increasingly engaging with labour, changing norms and models of employment, and forms of precarity, thus opening up lines of communication with labour geography (see, for example, Canada, 2018; Chan, 2018; Ioannides and Zampoukos, 2018; Terry, 2018). Overlap with areas like labour law (Axelsson and Hedberg, 2018; Doucette and Kang, 2018; England and Alcorn, 2018; Strauss, 2015, 2016) and occupational health and safety (Prentice et al, 2018) is also growing, in part due to research agendas that highlight precaritization as a multi-modal process.…”