Welcome to BASE21

By Lee Chi-sun
Staff reporter

The Struggle Network for Migrant Workers' Complete Labor Rights & Freedom of Migration Working' (SNMRF) held it’s third solidarity demonstration at Myongdong Cathedral at noon on December 16. The schedule was originally planned at 3 pm. but was changed to 12 o’clock in order to join a collective struggle in front of E-Land Junggye Store.
In spite of the very cold weather and sudden change of meeting time, many groups participated in the rally, expressing their intentions of solidarity.
The issues of the event included the government trying to keep the trainee system without enacting the EPS; how the migrant camp will struggle; and how Korean and migrant workers can build solidarity against the government and capitalists’ policy of restructuring and extending the job share of irregular workers.
SNMRF insisted that the trainee system, depriving human and labor rights and threatening the right of migrant workers to live should be abolished and that undocumented migrant workers, making up 70% of total migrant workers, should be granted amnesty. It continued that the migrant system changing to EPS is not hopeful, as it is another regulation institution for migrant workers, so the struggle targets should be the abolition of the trainee system, amnesty for undocumented workers, and endowing the perfect labor rights of migrant workers.
SNMRF pointed out that the mainstream of the Korean labor movement has the tendency of bureaucratism and improvement rather than total reform and it supported the E-Land struggle, which uses actions rather than words. In addition, SNMRF added, “Korean informal workers are not very different to migrant workers, as they receive only as much as 400,000~500,000 won per month, so we are advocating the necessity of solidarity by Korean workers with migrant workers in the struggle at every meeting.”