SNUAC Visiting Scholars Seminar Series, Fall 2017

SNUAC cordially invites you to

Defiant Outsiders, Compliant Insiders: Dynamic Interaction between Regular and Non-Regular Workers’ Movements at the Hyundai Shipyard, Ulsan

Monday, December 11 | 12:00 PM | SNUAC Rm #406
Speaker: Minhyoung Kang, Johns Hopkins University

In this seminar, Minhyoung will be introducing content of his research. His  research explores the processes leading to the emergence and persistence of, and resistance to labor market dualism and inequality in the South Korea’s shipbuilding industry. Through the in-depth case study on the industrial and labor relations in Hyundai Heavy Industries, the world’s largest shipbuilder, this research suggests that in-house subcontracting system has been installed and consolidated into a system of categorical inequality in the workplace. It also examines the relational mechanisms facilitating or impeding the inequality based on employment status. In his paper, he argues that, while a few union activists fought against the growth of non-regular precarious workers, many already-unionized regular workers and their conservative union leaders pursued firm-level compromise and cooperation with their employers by allowing them to promote the over-exploitation of non-regular workers and by excluding these precarious workers from union membership. His paper also shows thatnon-regular workers, faced with hard work, heavy repression against their union, and despotism in the workplace, were able to organize collective protests to resist the employment status inequality, thus either provoking the workplace conflict between compliant insiders (directly-hired regular workers) and defiant outsiders (indirectly-hired non-regular workers) or promoting solidarity between insiders and outsiders in the dual labor market. In doing so, this research can illuminate the institutionalization of workplace inequality and limits of micro-corporatism and labor market dualism.

Minhyoung Kang

is a PhD candidate studying sociology at Johns Hopkins University. He received his B.A. and M.A. from Seoul National University. His research interests include labor and labor movements, political economy of world-systems, and sociology of development. He has also worked as a researcher with Dr. Beverly Silver on a project to identify the patterns and waves of global social protest at Arrighi Center for Global Studies. He received the Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct his research project on dualism in the workplace. He is currently doing fieldwork in major industrial cities including Ulsan and Incheon, South Korea.

[ANNOUNCEMENT]

There will be End of Semester Social for visiting scholars and SNUAC members after this seminar at 1:30 PM, Rm 406. Wine, cheese, refreshments and music will be prepared for all of us.

This is the last Visiting Scholar Seminar of the 2017 Fall Semester at SNUAC. Thank you for participating visiting scholar seminars this semester and let us continue the academic exchanges with new visiting scholars upcoming spring semester.