Communist Workers Group (CWG-USA)

Defend South Korean Rail workers!

Hands Off Korean Workers!

For International Labor Actions to Defend South Korean Rail workers!

The 22-day Korean KORAIL railway strike by more than 8,000 workers of the Korean Railway Workers Union (KRWU) and the Korean Public Services and Transportation Worker’s Unions (KPTU, a federation of unions) against privatization of the state-run service ended on December 31^st.  The longest ever South Korean railway strike ended as the “ruling Saenuri and main opposition Democratic parties agreed to set up a parliamentary subcommittee under the transport ministry” in a move to try to placate and scam the striking workers.[1]  This “agreement” has no guarantee to stop privatization or halt attacks on the railway workers, but is simply a ruling class means of ending the strike and putting on the appearance of “fairness”.  It only states that they “can also form an advisory panel, to include officials from KORAIL and experts, to ensure no rail privatization takes place.”  Workers supporting and placing faith in capitalist political parties, government agencies, labor boards or binding arbitration is a recipe for defeat. In fact, the repressive South Korean (ROK) government of President Park Geun-hye is going after the workers with revenge prosecutions while the official line of class reconciliation has all the real content of Orwellian “double-speak.”

The Minister of Land Infrastructure and Transportation has “reconfirmed its position that ‘the illegal strike is illegal’.” Police are continuing to target union and strike leaders, like KRWU President Kim Myung-hwan.  During the strike, on December 22^nd, the 4,600 riot police, including 900 SWAT, laid siege to the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) office and broke in, pepper-sprayed and arrested 120 trade unionists, including KCTU leaders.[2]  The ROK has a history of vicious, anti-labor and anti-democratic repression, particularly against teachers and public sector workers, who can be held personally financially liable for strike actions.  During the 2006 railway strike, which was also declared illegal by the capitalist state, at least 411 striking workers were imprisoned.

KORAIL also stated it will maintain all the disciplinary measures against the striking workers, as well as criminal charges.[3]  On top of this, KORAIL is now demanding that the KRWU pay for the costs of employing scabs during the strike (!!!) and the union faces a $14.5 million lawsuit on top of the $4.6 million 2009 lawsuit still going through the courts.[4]

The ROK government anti-union policy is an international scandal.  This policy can only survive because it pleases the USA’s capitalist class.  South Korea is a Potsdam conference invention that depends for its existence on US military force.  We demand the withdrawal of all US troops from South Korea and for the closure and dismantling of bases and installations.  Realism dictates that only action by the Korean workers supported by the international working class can make the US forces leave as Korea would be the front line state in the US Pacific Pivot preparations for capitalist restoration in the North and operations against China in WWIII.  No US/SEATO navel base in Je-Ju!

Korean workers North and South need to defeat every privatization drive as well as the Stalinist Kim regime’s stratagems for restoring capitalism along the lines of the Chinese model.  In the one scenario North Korea becomes part of an existing American semi-colony in South Korea while in the other it becomes a semi-colony of Chinese imperialism.  The road to victory for a united Korean people would overthrow the parasitic Stalinist Bureaucracy in the North and unite all Korean workers against the US and competing imperialisms and their pet capitalist class in the South.

The class enemy, being a small group, more easily arrives at agreement but we’re happy to say they are having their difficulties.  January was the month Obama had hoped to fast track the Trans-Pacific Partnership Act (TPPA) for the benefit of corporatist capitalism everywhere.  But this deal is nowhere near done with member states balking at its provisions, so that Obama is nowhere near a position to reach for his rubber stamp.  We should caution that congress seems poised to give Obama Fast Track power.  This is a threat aimed at the Korean working class, a special gift to the privatizer predator corporations in imperialist countries who look at the Korean labor force with vampire appetites.  With the TPPA imperialist firms can incorporate as Korean enterprises and then sue any government in the member states, federal, state or local in private TPPA courts for passing laws that protect the environment, consumers, or workers from their pursuit of private profit.

The US imperialist master of the ROK regime has been ready and willing to smash the South Korean workers’ movement and any strike at all times since General Hodges arrival in September 1945.  The US army suppressed the indigenous South Korean regime, installed the puppet Synghman Rhee, suppressed the anti-Rhee uprising of 1946 and then launched a campaign of provocations leading to the war of July 1950.  To remove this “temporary” occupation army from South Korea we need stateside industrial solidarity actions and strikes against the US military by its civilian employees.  We call upon US troops in Korea to build a

“Let’s Go Home” movement and we call for all occupation troops out of South Korea.

For a socialist revolution that derives its power from the rank and file and places the levers of power in the hands of the rank and file, a Bolshevik Leninist Party of the type described in Trotsky’s 1938 Transitional Program is required.  For truly effective solidarity to be organized a new international of such revolutionary workers parties is also required. This is now a requirement for species survival as well.  Truly and as never before to the same degree, human kind faces the choice, socialism or barbarism.

VEOLIA wants BART and KORAIL too, so class conscious workers demand:

• SOLIDARITY WITH THE KOREAN RAIL WORKERS!
• The ROK must drop all prosecutions and abolish all fines levied upon Korean Rail Workers for fighting against the privatization of the rail system!
• Reinstate all strikers fired by KORAIL without discipline or prejudice and make restitutions to them for any fines including those levied after previous strikes!
• Free all Korean class struggle and political prisoners.
• No navel base at Je-Ju and no TPPA, twin harbingers of World War III!
• For labor solidarity actions in defense of Korean political prisoners, class struggle fighters, rail workers and their unions!
• US transport workers: hot-cargo goods from South Korea until all charges are dropped and all Korean workers are released!  Organize rank and file union committees to build solidarity actions!
• For multi-national strikes against Veolia and all multinational privatizers!
• NO STRIKE IS ILLEGAL-DEFY AND DEFEAT LAWS AGAINST TRANSPORTATION AND PUBLIC SECTOR STRIKES, IN KOREA AND NYC TODAY AND IN CALIFORNIA AND BEYOND TOMORROW!

BART Strike leader George Figuroa leads workers in solidarity action at the Korean  Consulate in San Francisco.