Four Layers of Siege and One Confession
May 19, 2 a.m. Negotiations resume today at 10 a.m. in Sejong. Two days until the strike. But what happened yesterday already completed the character of this conflict outside the negotiating table.
The Suwon District Court partially granted Samsung Electronics' injunction request to prohibit unlawful strike actions. It ordered "maintaining the same level of workforce as in normal times." Occupation of facilities and obstruction of core work were prohibited. The strike itself was not prohibited. This is noteworthy. Even the court could not deny the workers' right to strike. However, at the same time, it imposed a fine of 100 million won per day on the union and 10 million won per day on the union chairperson for violations. Recognizing the right to strike but making its exercise as expensive as possible. This is the judiciary's method of class arbitration.
Here, the four concentric circles of state power have been completed. The first layer: Labor Minister Kim Young-hoon visited the union office. The second layer: Prime Minister Kim Min-seok publicly mentioned the emergency mediation rights and issued a public address. The third layer: President Lee Jae-myung tweeted that "management rights must be respected as much as labor rights." The fourth layer: Now the court has issued an injunction. The judiciary has joined the three-stage pressure from the executive branch. The state intervention that began with the minister's visit on the 15th has expanded into an executive-judicial front within 72 hours. This is not merely pressure; it is the full mobilization of state apparatuses.
Yet what the four layers of siege prove is the opposite. The reason state apparatuses have to go this far is because Samsung Electronics workers can genuinely halt production. The minister's visit, the prime minister's address, the president's tweet, and the court's injunction are all confessions to the same fact. Before the structural power of workers standing in front of the semiconductor lines, the state's ordinary repression is insufficient. Each of the four layers of encirclement was mobilized because the previous layer was not enough.
The analysis published by the Bank of Korea on the same day is another form of the same confession. "If Samsung Electronics goes on a general strike, this year's economic growth rate could fall by 0.5 percentage points," "Up to 30 trillion won in losses." The central bank is an institution that deals with monetary policy. That institution quantified and publicly announced the macroeconomic losses from a specific workplace's labor dispute. This is the same message translated into technocratic language. That this strike is not an ordinary labor dispute. That this strike threatens the national accumulation system itself. What the Bank of Korea says in numbers, the minister says through a visit, the prime minister through threats, the president through a tweet, and the court through an injunction. The language differs, but the subject of the sentence is the same. The state.
The most notable part of the court ruling is the phrase "normal level." The court ordered maintaining "the same level of workforce as in normal times" but did not specify the exact number. The union immediately exploited this ambiguity. Their interpretation is that the normal level in normal times could mean a weekday, a weekend, or a holiday. The union argues that "the normal level ordered by the court is satisfied by a maintenance and repair staffing level." Management counters that it means "production-capable workforce at a weekday level." The court's neutral language is thus immediately turned into a weapon of class struggle. The word "normal" is not neutral. The question is whose normal. Capital's normal is maximum production. Labor's normal is minimum maintenance. The court, by not deciding between these two normals, sent the violence of decision back to the field. And this interpretative struggle itself has already become part of the strike.
Yesterday's negotiations ended without conclusion around 6:30 p.m. The Central Labor Relations Commission plans to continue consultations without a formal deadline today. This is effectively the final round of talks. Even as the four layers of siege tighten, the union has not yet put away the strike card. 46,000 union members are still looking toward the 21st. The prime minister's "last chance," the president's "too much is as bad as too little," and the court's fines have not yet driven them out of the negotiating room. This must be assessed. The fact that workers are holding out in the face of the full mobilization of the comprador-monopoly capitalist state apparatuses. That fact alone means this strike has already begun.
No one knows whether an agreement will be reached in today's negotiations. But one thing is certain: these 72 hours, in which the state had to mobilize four layers of siege, will become a precedent for the Korean labor movement to reference in the future. The nature of the state is fully revealed only in crisis. And now, the state is not hiding its nature.
The Suwon District Court partially granted Samsung Electronics' injunction request to prohibit unlawful strike actions. It ordered "maintaining the same level of workforce as in normal times." Occupation of facilities and obstruction of core work were prohibited. The strike itself was not prohibited. This is noteworthy. Even the court could not deny the workers' right to strike. However, at the same time, it imposed a fine of 100 million won per day on the union and 10 million won per day on the union chairperson for violations. Recognizing the right to strike but making its exercise as expensive as possible. This is the judiciary's method of class arbitration.
Here, the four concentric circles of state power have been completed. The first layer: Labor Minister Kim Young-hoon visited the union office. The second layer: Prime Minister Kim Min-seok publicly mentioned the emergency mediation rights and issued a public address. The third layer: President Lee Jae-myung tweeted that "management rights must be respected as much as labor rights." The fourth layer: Now the court has issued an injunction. The judiciary has joined the three-stage pressure from the executive branch. The state intervention that began with the minister's visit on the 15th has expanded into an executive-judicial front within 72 hours. This is not merely pressure; it is the full mobilization of state apparatuses.
Yet what the four layers of siege prove is the opposite. The reason state apparatuses have to go this far is because Samsung Electronics workers can genuinely halt production. The minister's visit, the prime minister's address, the president's tweet, and the court's injunction are all confessions to the same fact. Before the structural power of workers standing in front of the semiconductor lines, the state's ordinary repression is insufficient. Each of the four layers of encirclement was mobilized because the previous layer was not enough.
The analysis published by the Bank of Korea on the same day is another form of the same confession. "If Samsung Electronics goes on a general strike, this year's economic growth rate could fall by 0.5 percentage points," "Up to 30 trillion won in losses." The central bank is an institution that deals with monetary policy. That institution quantified and publicly announced the macroeconomic losses from a specific workplace's labor dispute. This is the same message translated into technocratic language. That this strike is not an ordinary labor dispute. That this strike threatens the national accumulation system itself. What the Bank of Korea says in numbers, the minister says through a visit, the prime minister through threats, the president through a tweet, and the court through an injunction. The language differs, but the subject of the sentence is the same. The state.
The most notable part of the court ruling is the phrase "normal level." The court ordered maintaining "the same level of workforce as in normal times" but did not specify the exact number. The union immediately exploited this ambiguity. Their interpretation is that the normal level in normal times could mean a weekday, a weekend, or a holiday. The union argues that "the normal level ordered by the court is satisfied by a maintenance and repair staffing level." Management counters that it means "production-capable workforce at a weekday level." The court's neutral language is thus immediately turned into a weapon of class struggle. The word "normal" is not neutral. The question is whose normal. Capital's normal is maximum production. Labor's normal is minimum maintenance. The court, by not deciding between these two normals, sent the violence of decision back to the field. And this interpretative struggle itself has already become part of the strike.
Yesterday's negotiations ended without conclusion around 6:30 p.m. The Central Labor Relations Commission plans to continue consultations without a formal deadline today. This is effectively the final round of talks. Even as the four layers of siege tighten, the union has not yet put away the strike card. 46,000 union members are still looking toward the 21st. The prime minister's "last chance," the president's "too much is as bad as too little," and the court's fines have not yet driven them out of the negotiating room. This must be assessed. The fact that workers are holding out in the face of the full mobilization of the comprador-monopoly capitalist state apparatuses. That fact alone means this strike has already begun.
No one knows whether an agreement will be reached in today's negotiations. But one thing is certain: these 72 hours, in which the state had to mobilize four layers of siege, will become a precedent for the Korean labor movement to reference in the future. The nature of the state is fully revealed only in crisis. And now, the state is not hiding its nature.