MSSC STRUGGLE REPORT (서울, 南朝鮮, 6.09/10)

This we wrote yesterday morning. Meanwhile the hospital workers started the strike hours after the Labor Relations Commission tried in vain early on Thursday morning to mediate in the dispute between the National Health and Medical Industry Workers Union and hospital “managements”. The marathon negotiations kicked off on before yesterday afternoon and dragged on for 14 hours until yesterday, 4 a.m. During this time thousands of unionists started a sit-in strike in Korea University. Before yesterday, still the Union negotiated, in the evening a great event was celebrated – a powerful struggle culture festival. We participated and after the festival we stayed there, showing up our solidarity with their struggle, until 6 o’clock in the morning. The labor unions are demanding a five day workweek, keeping the standard working week of 40 hours (eight hours a day!), increasing salaries by 10.7 percent, strengthening the public sector in the medical industry and converting non-regular employees to regular workers. Yesterday (Thursday) hundreds of irregular workers started to join the strike. So now around 15,000 workers are in sit-in strike in Korea University. Yesterday the first day of general strike was celebrated… again with a great struggle culture festival. Short after we arrived the presenter (MC) introduced us, and our struggle and we got a lot of applause from more than 15,000 workers. The same when the protest singer Park Yoon and Ji Min-ju were talking to the audience about their experiences with our struggle. It was just great to see and feel the sympathy from thousands of Korean workers! THANK YOU A LOT!!! Beside this our struggle is continuing too! And it becomes a new, but bad quality: yesterday in Daegu our comrade Kim Heon-joo was detained. He is one of our most active supporters. Last year already he was attacked by immigration officers, during a visit we made for arrested Bidduth and Jamal in Hwaseong detention center (here you can read an article Korean about the incident). If our enemy is now starting to attack our Korean comrades, it seems like a very serious step in a dangerous direction. Before yesterday, before we went to Korea University, of course we participated on the weekly night rally of the construction workers sit-in struggle collective. Yesterday before we went again to Korea University, we had our own rally in Myeong-dong – more than 20 members from different student and solidarity groups (THANX A LOT!) joined.

Here some pictures from the struggle culture festival on Wednesday night and the morning after