Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Yoonkyung Lee is Associate Professor of Sociology and Asian and Asian-American Studies at the State University of New York at Binghamton.

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Militants or Partisans

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

List of Illustrations.......................................................................ixAcknowledgments.............................................................................xiAbbreviations...............................................................................xvNotes on Names and References...............................................................xvii1. Introduction.............................................................................12. Labor Politics: Realities, Theories, and Explanations....................................123. Authoritarian Legacies and Democratic Coalitions in Korea and Taiwan.....................504. Labor Unions and Political Parties in Democratized Korea and Taiwan......................735. Labor-Reform Politics in Democratized Korea and Taiwan...................................1026. Conclusion...............................................................................141Appendix A: Interviews and Participatory Observations.......................................149Appendix B: National Legislators' Career Background (NLCB) Data.............................153Notes.......................................................................................155References..................................................................................165Index.......................................................................................177

Chapter One

The Puzzle: Scooters and Cars

The scene that struck me most when I first arrived in Taipei in the spring of 2003 was of the streets filled with scooters. Young and old, men and women, humans and pets were riding these versatile vehicles. More surprisingly, there seemed to be few clashes between the scooter riders and car drivers, either in the form of physical bumping or in the sounds of yelling and swearing. This was quite a contrast to the street scenes with which I had been more familiar. The roads in Seoul are notoriously jammed with cars whose drivers are highly impatient, if not hostile, to smaller vehicles such as scooters and bikes.

As a comparativist trying to figure out the origins of divergent labor politics in East Asian democracies, I found that these contrasting street scenes seemed to capture perfectly the different paths adopted by labor unions in Korea and Taiwan. Militant, radical, and confrontational have been the words associated with Korean labor, whereas terms such as partisan, moderate, and dependent have described Taiwanese unions. The basic puzzle that this study explores in these two Asian democracies is their types of labor politics, which are as distinctive as the streets in Seoul and Taipei: Why did these seemingly twin-like East Asian polities come to breed such different types of labor politics in their post-democratization decades?

Indeed, Korea and Taiwan often team up as the most comparable pair in the imperfect world of small-number cross-national comparisons. Historically, both experienced Japanese colonialism during the first half of the twentieth century, followed by national division. Trapped within the Cold War political competition, authoritarian regimes in South Korea and Taiwan outlived the post-WWII decades under the tutelage of U.S. power. Dictators compensated for their legitimacy complex with export-oriented economic development, later to be described as the East Asian economic miracle. Along with the phenomenal industrialization and rising material affluence, a deprived working population and dissident intellectuals emerged to form the basis of a coalition to push the wheels for democratization in the late 1980s.

Astounded by the exceptional abilities of Korea and Taiwan to combine high growth and liberal democracy in such a short and similar timetable, scholars researched and wrote much about the contours of these nations' economic and political transformations. However, these analysts' research agendas have often been bounded by the framework of the developmental state, government–business coordination, or elite-negotiated transitions.

This study turns the spotlight onto somewhat unusual collective actors in East Asia—workers and unions—and asks what happened to them when they encountered the long-yearned-for democracy after decades of labor-repressive rule. Obviously, political democratization since 1987 has ushered in heightened labor mobilization and increased union organizing. Workers have demanded decent wages and improved working conditions. But even more desperate than these voices for material compensation was their desire for humane treatment and recognition as legitimate members of a democratic system. Yet the way in which union actors pursued their goals drastically differed and eventually diverged into two varieties of labor politics. Two decades of democratic strengthening in Korea have not stopped unionists from taking to the streets and frequently clashing with police forces. In contrast, union mobilization has become a seasonal event in Taiwan, and labor issues seem to have become integrated into the formal political processes, where politicians often campaign on labor-policy issues.

This book's main goal is to explain the origins, processes, and outcomes of this variety of labor politics in East Asian democracies. As the title suggests, this study questions why Korean unions are militants whereas Taiwanese unions are partisans. As militants, Korean unions continue to resort to confrontational mobilization, but Taiwanese unions, as partisans, seek moderate methods to implement their labor agenda through the political process. What are the historical origins and political processes that have produced this divergence? And eventually, what has organized labor gained through these varied collective efforts in labor-reform politics under democratic governments in the last twenty years? For our more general understanding of labor politics, is militancy a fair manifestation of union strength and efficacy that leads to greater policy gains, or are we missing some important alternative strategies and hidden paths for labor movements? Finally, how does the Korea–Taiwan comparison deepen our theoretical understanding of democracy, democratic representation, and labor politics in a more general sense?

Whether labor militancy is enthusiastically applauded by leftist circles and antiglobalization activists or vehemently loathed by international investors and corporate managers, it represents more than the degree of union recalcitrance. Perhaps it tells more about democracy than we usually expect. If democratization is understood as a process of expanding the representation of previously excluded groups, labor militancy is a reflection of the identity of the insiders and outsiders of a democratic system. Frequent collective actions by workers on the shop floors or in the streets are an indication that they have found no organization to introduce their voice into the institutionalized political process. Moreover, strikes and demonstrations by unions are not without consequences, both political and economic. Insiders can affect the direction of policy formation and resource allocation, whereas outsiders cannot. The prolonged existence of disgruntled outsiders may result in an erosion of institutional stability and legitimacy. Also, volatility in labor relations often becomes a negative indicator of the national economy's competitiveness and labor productivity, which could eventually worsen the bargaining conditions of labor. For these reasons, understanding labor militancy or its absence is more significant than labor militancy's face value.

A Political Explanation: Labor Politics Is a Democratic Project

Several explanations have been offered to account for union militancy in Korea versus union moderation in Taiwan. These accounts converge on emphasizing the importance of the structural differences between these two economies and the structural strengths that buttress the labor actors. Korea is recognized for the dominance of large conglomerates, known as chaebols, whereas Taiwan's economy is notable for the vibrancy of a large number of small- and medium-size enterprises. So, the argument goes, Korean unions that were formed in the big chaebol companies are better organized and exert greater leverage than do their counterparts in Taiwan. Taiwanese unions are presumed to be handicapped by collective-action problems because of their dispersion into numerous small firms. Additionally, organized as decentralized enterprise unions, Korean labor is often criticized for its habit of engaging in militant mobilization to pursue its parochial interests at the cost of macronational consequences.

These accounts tell bits and parts of the labor-movement story but obviously not the whole account. It is true that Korean unions are organized at the firm level, mostly berthed in large conglomerates. Yet Taiwanese unions are the same. A close examination of the structural and organizational conditions that undergird labor unions in these two democracies, as this study will show, reveals that they share more similarities than differences. Regardless of the macro-structural differences, unions in both Korea and Taiwan are primarily organized in large firms, maintain a decentralized enterprise union structure with a similar level of unionization rates, and are equally divided into two national centers, one conservative and the other progressive. Therefore, the questions about why these union actors with so many similarities in their structural and organizational features have chosen different modes of mobilization to achieve their goals under democratic politics have remained unanswered.

To account for these differences in labor politics, this study builds upon the theoretical tradition that has viewed unions as political actors that constantly interact and negotiate with the political conditions in which they are situated (Lipset 1983; Collier and Collier 1991; Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens 1992; Collier 1999; Bartolini 2007). This approach is a clear departure from an economic perspective that interprets labor unions primarily as the embodiment of economic interests tied to their place within the economic structure (Rogowski 1989; Pontusson 1992; Hall and Soskice 2001). This economic perspective dismisses the significance of labor unions' historical and political experiences and consequently errs by assuming that unions represent an intrinsic, essentialist labor interest. As collective actors develop their preferences and interests based on their position within the socioeconomic structure, they are concurrently shaped by given historical and political experiences.

When we think of working-class mobilizations in early-twentieth- century Europe, for instance, their interest in economic enhancement was closely tied to their political demand for universal enfranchisement (Bartolini 2007). However, workers' protest in the third-wave democratization differed from earlier mobilizations depending on how workers saw their interests being infringed by authoritarian regimes (Seidman 1994; Collier 1999; Bellin 2000; Candland and Sil 2001). For South African workers, labor subjugation, racial apartheid, and authoritarian politics overtly coincided, whereas labor privileges and political democratization were separate goals for Mexican workers with prolonged experience of state dependency. Moreover, for these distinctive interests to be manifested into "labor movements," workers have to overcome collective action problems and engage in strategic interactions with other collective actors, which are conditioned by specific institutional opportunities and constraints.

In short, labor's interests and actions cannot be fully understood without a systematic analysis of politics. Politics here is understood as political institutions, relationships with other political actors, and political experiences that offer varying possibilities and limitations to organized labor. The importance of politics is more pronounced when the focus of research is workers and unions in a polity transitioning from authoritarianism into democracy. Under such transformative circumstances, labor politics becomes a democratic project where workers and unions are fully immersed in contestation and negotiation for greater representation and influence by exploring the opportunities under the political institutions in flux. Students of labor need to go further from a structuralist argument to disentangle these political interactions and processes that condition the molding of labor into collective actors. Without disclosing the interactions between union actors and their political environment, we may not be able to fully grasp the causal paths that lead to the national variations of labor activism.

To account for the evolution of different patterns of labor politics in Korea and Taiwan, I build my explanation by connecting authoritarian legacies, political coalitions under democratic politics, and the modes of labor mobilization. Authoritarian legacies are known to leave lasting imprints on the development of political parties (Mainwaring 1999; Geddes and Franz 2007), civil society (Kubicek 2004; Bernhard and Karakoc 2007), and labor actors (Collier and Collier 1991; Buchanan 1995; Kubicek 1999; Pollert 2000; Robertson 2004; Crowley 2004; Cook 2007; Caraway 2008). However, authoritarians come in various shapes and adopt different control strategies vis-à-vis their political opposition. For authoritarian legacies, I focus on how strategies of incorporation or exclusion employed by dictators affected the interests and capacities of political challengers. Oppositional actors more exposed to incorporation and formal politics are more likely to be expected to learn to moderate their demands and tactics than are those who are mostly excluded under authoritarian rule.

In understanding the development of labor politics, the formation of a democratic coalition under authoritarian rule is also of critical importance. Whether this coalition includes labor or not and whether this coalition is led by an opposition party (or parties) or social-movement groups can significantly affect labor's position during democratic transition and beyond. Here the role of political parties is crucial. It has been one of the few reaffirmed claims in comparative politics that partisan coalitions between labor unions and political parties (left, populist, or otherwise) have been instrumental in harnessing labor militancy and instituting pro-labor policies (Garrett and Lange 1989; Levitsky and Way 1998; Murillo 2001; Tafel and Boniface 2003; Etchemendy 2004; Burgess 2004). Because partisan allies are able to provide access to labor policy making and channel material rewards to organized labor, unions with partisan allies are more likely to pursue institutionalized methods of interest articulation under democratic governments. However, if union actors have no political agent to take their voices into the formal political process, they tend to continue to resort to outsider tactics—for example, militant mobilization. As Lipset argued years ago, labor militancy is a proxy for unions' frustration that originates from their exclusion from the formal political process (1983). It is thus critical to investigate who labor's friends are and whether these coalition partners can provide unions with meaningful access to institutionalized politics.

These political experiences of the past and present offer different possibilities for and limits on unions' mobilization strategies, which this study conceptualizes as militant unionism (independent unions engaging in frequent strikes and street rallies that often involve confrontation with law-enforcement authorities) versus partisan unionism (party-dependent unions employing moderated small-scale collective actions aimed at pressuring and lobbying within legal limits). Historical legacies of exclusion and the subsequent absence of partisan representation produce militant unions. Yet this heightened militancy is expected to be less successful in labor-reform politics under democratic governments because of unions' lack of partisan allies who can offer policy influence within the government. Partisan unions, although less dramatic in street politics, might be able to garner policy concessions with their ties to political parties within institutional politics.

These theoretical expectations are confirmed by the Korea–Taiwan comparison. I argue that the continued militancy of Korean unions originates from authoritarian exclusion and the absence of political parties to represent labor interests in democratic politics. Korea's military dictators sought collusive alliance with large capitalists and their hometown cliques while using a strategy of blatant exclusion to tightly contain labor mobilization and political opposition. Limited opportunities for electoral contestation and the high costs associated with political dissent against dictators divided political opposition into party-oriented and movement-oriented groups, with the latter becoming better organized and more influential. Unions were further limited by authoritarian laws that prohibited unions' political activities in addition to restricting union organizing. These exclusionary control strategies by the Korean developmental state not only radicalized political dissenters but also brought workers and oppositional groups together. Therefore, Korean workers with little experience in resolving labor grievances within institutional channels came to project a radical vision of labor politics, both in their interests and in their modes of mobilization.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Militants or Partisansby Yoonkyung Lee Copyright © 2011 by Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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