Chun Soonok's Books

They Are Not Machines

Korean Women Workers and their Fight for Democratic Trade Unionism in the 1970s

By: Chun Soonok

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They Are Not Machines

Korean Women Workers and their Fight for Democratic Trade Unionism in the 1970s

By: Chun Soonok

The multi-faceted tensions created in developing countries between a burgeoning popular desire for democracy and the harsh imperatives of modernisation and industrialisation are nowhere more evident than in the so-called 'Asian tiger' nations. Of all those nascent economies, South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s stands pre-eminent for the magnitude and speed of its development and the extraordinarily oppressive and inhumane conditions that its labour force, mainly women and young girls, were compelled to endure. The author of this book was one of those young girls who suffered in the warren of sweat-shop garment factories in the slums of central Seoul. With little or no support from male co-workers, and despite their political naivety and the traditionally subordinate status of Korean females, the women textile and garment workers confronted the ruling authority at all levels. The author's mother was one of their leaders, and her eldest brother sacrificed his life for their cause. Despite appalling state-directed violence, betrayal by erstwhile colleagues, the chicanery and mendacity of employers' cooperatives and countless other setbacks, these uneducated and overworked women finally succeeded in forming the first fully democratic trade union in the history of Korea. Based on compelling personal accounts this is the first published account of the women's struggle, and it throws much light on the process of modernisation and industrialisation in Korea and beyond.

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Page Count

236

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1351879529

ISBN 13

9781351879521

They Are Not Machines

Korean Women Workers and their Fight for Democratic Trade Unionism in the 1970s

By: Chun Soonok

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

They Are Not Machines

Korean Women Workers and their Fight for Democratic Trade Unionism in the 1970s

By: Chun Soonok

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N/A

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

236

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1351879529

ISBN 13

9781351879521

Organizing at the Margins

The Symbolic Politics of Labor in South Korea and the United States

By: Jennifer Jihye Chun

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Organizing at the Margins

The Symbolic Politics of Labor in South Korea and the United States

By: Jennifer Jihye Chun

The realities of globalization have produced a surprising reversal in the focus and strategies of labor movements around the world. After years of neglect and exclusion, labor organizers are recognizing both the needs and the importance of immigrants and women employed in the growing ranks of low-paid and insecure service jobs. In Organizing at the Margins, Jennifer Jihye Chun focuses on this shift as it takes place in two countries: South Korea and the United States. Using comparative historical inquiry and in-depth case studies, she shows how labor movements in countries with different histories and structures of economic development, class formation, and cultural politics embark on similar trajectories of change. Chun shows that as the base of worker power shifts from those who hold high-paying, industrial jobs to the formerly "unorganizable," labor movements in both countries are employing new strategies and vocabularies to challenge the assault of neoliberal globalization on workers' rights and livelihoods. Deftly combining theory and ethnography, she argues that by cultivating alternative sources of "symbolic leverage" that root workers' demands in the collective morality of broad-based communities, as opposed to the narrow confines of workplace disputes, workers in the lowest tiers are transforming the power relations that sustain downgraded forms of work. Her case studies of janitors and personal service workers in the United States and South Korea offer a surprising comparison between converging labor movements in two very different countries as they refashion their relation to historically disadvantaged sectors of the workforce and expand the moral and material boundaries of union membership in a globalizing world.

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Page Count

245

Publisher

Cornell University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0801457211

ISBN 13

9780801457210

Book's by Chun Soonok

They Are Not Machines

They Are Not Machines

They Are Not Machines

They Are Not Machines

Organizing at the Margins

Organizing at the Margins

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