【英語の抗議文】 TOKYO/ YOKOHAMA-BASED ARTISTS, MUSICIANS, ACTIVISTS, MAKERS, CREATORS We ask for your solidarity and creative action.
This is about the people who made one third of the guitars being circulated worldwide but didn't own their own livelihoods. Do the names Ibanez, Fender, Cort or Parkwood sound familiar to you?
Their factory was unventilated and had no windows in the name of ‘high productivity.’ They worked without a break, like hens in cages, and eventually became ill and injured. Some workers lost their fingers in the sawing machines, others suffered from chronic muscle and bone related diseases caused by the sanding and grinding process with only a facemask against the dust. Most of them contracted bronchitis or asthma caused by working in the unventilated paint rooms full of solvents. They worked overtime without being paid for all those hours, arriving early and leaving late, some even collapsing at the factory and then asked to sign resignation papers by their boss while they lay in their hospital beds.
Nevertheless, these Korean workers were happy whenever they saw the gleaming guitars inlaid with mother of pearl, produced by their own hands and exported to countries around the world. They worked hard, day and night, for ten to twenty years with pride. Finally, after establishing their labor union in 2006, they raised their wage to the highest level in 12 years, but the raise only brought them near the minimum wage of Korea.
Meanwhile, Park Young Ho, the CEO of Cor-tek, has built up a fortune of $78Million dollars during this period at the expense of the workers' labor. As of now, he ranks 125th among the richest men in the world. After establishing his new factory in China in 1997, he gradually reduced the production lines in Korea and shifted them abroad. That was the planned scheme, which he did not disclose to his workers. Furthermore, on April 2007, he laid off 56 factory workers in Incheon, Korea, secretly closed the business of the Daejeon, Korea, factory and laid off the remaining 67 workers three months later. In protest against the company's secretive and illegal restructuring policy, Lee Dong Ho, one of the workers, protested by burning himself on December 2007. But Park didn't care about the life of his worker, and also closed the business of Incheon factory on August 2008, claiming a sham bankruptcy. With nowhere else to go, the illegally fired workers have protested by protecting and occupying the closed factory since then.
Last year, they protested with a hunger strike on the high electricity tower on Seoul’s riverside for a month. They tried to squat in the head office of Cort but all were arrested by specially trained police officers soon after. Perhaps guitars with the brand name of Fender, Ibanez, Cort, or Parkwood were playing a song of love somewhere around the world at the moment when the workers were being dragged to the police office like dogs.
Now, maybe the melody can sound differently. The workers are terribly afraid of this current period of negligence and severe hardship. They fear facing indifference, estrangement and oblivion from people.
Fortunately, many Korean artists, musicians, and those who belong to art and cultural organizations have joined to support the workers’ cause, putting on public concerts, exhibits, making documentaries in Korea, and in the spring, German artists and musicians did likewise at Musikmesse 2009, a global music instrument convention.
We appeal to you to act creatively to publicize the injustice of the company, which has been handed down a ruling in August, 2009, by Seoul’s High Court, that their mass firing had been illegal. But that hasn’t changed the actions of the company. http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/371173.html
Some workers will visit the Yokohama Music Fair taking place November 5—8, and arriving Oct. 30th in Tokyo. We especially ask for the understanding and support of those in Tokyo and Yokohama who belong to art and cultural organizations and are active in media and social change. We ask for your solidarity and creative public actions.
People in Tokyo/Yokohama can support by:
- putting on music shows/ street theatre/ exhibits in solidarity - opening their clubs, spaces, identifying good public spaces for action or shows - navigating, driving, either at the fair or between Yokohama- Tokyo - translating Korean to Japanese and vice versa (documents, or simultaneous interpretation for the delegation) - being present with us during day's activities - writing, documenting, journalism, blogging - any other creative way!
“The factory was always incredibly noisy and dusty. We worked standing all day long. Most of my coworkers suffer from asthma and swollen legs and have difficulty in hearing. My hands became sore from using heavily vibrating grinding machine for a long time. My hands needed surgery, but the company wouldn't recognize my case as a workers compensation case, for which they would be held responsible. Sometimes, the supervisor demanded to start us to start work as early as 6 am when there was a production deadline. At those times, we had to work without being paid any overtime allowance, even though we arrived earlier and worked later than our shifts.”
“Some supervisors even expressed their greetings by touching the hips of the women workers every morning. They harassed the pretty women workers by asking them to go out after work and molested those workers they considered ugly with mean behavior. For example, they continually assigned the workers they considered ugly to other production lines before these workers became accustomed to the first line. This mean behaviors made them feel crazy.”
“We couldn't even get the 15 minute-break twice a day until we organized the workers’ union. The supervisors cursed us if we didn't arrive 30 minutes early before the regular working hours. There was one worker who has worked at the painting process for 25 years and suffered from bronchitis. One day, when he lost consciousness during working, the managing staff even demanded for him to write a letter of resignation during hospitalization.”
“Since 2005, the company often said in public that they were suffering from a chronic deficit. We believed the company's explanation as is. Therefore, we saved materials and worked hard without requesting any overtime allowance. After organizing the union, we came to know the truth -- that our company had made a large profit of 65million dollars every year. All the workers who had worked with such patience were really shocked.”
“Some time ago, one of my coworkers forgot to give the morning greeting to the supervisor. Since then, he molested her and made complaints against her, even though she was actually very diligent and good at her work. On top of that, he would curse her for no apparent reason and assign her to other production lines several times. Whenever she felt tired of being harassed, she cried a lot and eventually, she retired. Soon after her resignation, she hung herself to death on the mountain behind the factory because of the depression this constant harassment caused her, still wearing her work vest stamped with "Cort" (the company name) on the back.
