Organizing the young precariat in South Korea: A case study of the Youth Community Union

Abstract

With the neoliberal turn, young people constitute a large part of the insecure class of workers, or the precariat. Given the transient nature of their employment, members of the young precariat face structural barriers that hinder their efforts to organize themselves into trade unions. In this article, the three key barriers to their organizing efforts are identified as underdeveloped common identities, scarce material resources, and inability to utilize conventional trade union resistance methods. Drawing upon social movement theory, this study explores the extent to which the Youth Community Union in South Korea has successfully handled these barriers to represent young, temporary workers.

Keywords

Precariat social movement theory South Korea Youth Community Union youth labor movement

Introduction

From the last decade of the 20th century, the neoliberal project of restructuring labor markets has given birth to a new social class – the precariat. This neologism combines the terms ‘precarious’ and ‘proletariat’ and was coined to refer to an emerging class characterized by low incomes and high job insecurity (Standing, 2011). With the recent increase in various forms of precarious employment, young people, among other groups (ethnic minorities, women, elderly laborers, and disabled people), constitute a large part of the precariat. Compared with other age groups, the position of young people in the labor market is more insecure (Kalleberg, 2009; Tailby and Pollert, 2011). The unemployment rate of youth (aged 25–29) in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in 2017 was 7.6%, slightly higher than the overall unemployment rate (5.9%). In the same year, the share of involuntary part-time young workers (aged 15–24) among employed youth was 4.8%, which is higher than the share of involuntary part-time workers among the total employed population, 3.3%.

The young members of the precariat face inferior working conditions such as low wages and employment insecurity (Hodder, 2015; Tailby and Pollert, 2011). In response, they might be expected to take collective action to enhance their employment conditions. However, several arguments have been made that members of the young precariat are being deprived of the opportunity for collective contestation (Hodder, 2015; Standing, 2011). First, as the number of young unemployed people has steadily risen, more and more workers have been looking for work, meaning that young workers can be easily replaced; in addition, they lack the power to negotiate with employers. Second, those who do have jobs are concentrated in small firms where worker collective action is less likely to occur. Third, service workplaces where young workers are concentrated tend to be geographically dispersed (Jiang and Korczynski, 2016), which makes organizing and taking collective action more difficult.

Recently, however, attempts have been made among young workers to represent their own economic interests by forming new, independent organizations. For example, in Japan, young temporary workers have formed labor NPOs and community-based trade unions (Royle and Urano, 2012; Shibata, 2016; Suzuki, 2008; Watanabe, 2015). In the USA, worker centers (such as Young Workers United) have been organized to improve employment conditions for the young precariat. In the UK, the Public and Commercial Service Union has formed the Young Members' Network to facilitate the participation of young workers in union activities (Hodder, 2015). In Italy, young precarious workers have organized the San Precario and the Clash City Workers, collective efforts to enhance young peoples' lives (Antunes, 2018; Della Porta et al., 2015).

Although these organizations were developed in different legal and social environments, there may be some common factors explaining their success. The first is the support of established trade unions (Simms et al., 2018; Tapia and Turner, 2018). In most cases, these unions helped young precarious workers conduct various campaigns outside the workplace against inferior working conditions (e.g. the Retail Action Project in the USA and the Fast Food Rights campaign in the UK). In addition, they have also formed civic organizations to organize members of the young precariat actively (e.g. the Stand Up movement in New Zealand and the Young Workers Centre in Australia). The second is that experiences of alternative labor movements seem to contribute to the success of youth workers' organizations. Young workers who built their own unions without the support of established trade unions used the historical experiences of alternative labor movements as a foundation for their efforts. For example, since the 1980s, more than 200 and 300 community-based organizations and worker centers have been established and operated in the USA and Japan, respectively. The history of alternative labor movements may be a source of inspiration for the building of unions for the young precariat.

In recent years, young members of the precariat in South Korea (hereafter, Korea) have also attempted to organize themselves. However, they have faced several structural challenges. First, the dominant form of trade unions in Korea has been the enterprise union; other kinds of unions (e.g. industrial unions and community unions) which normally unite workers across workplaces have been marginalized and less influential (Lee, 2011). Authoritative governments have suppressed workers' efforts to consolidate their powers at the industrial and regional levels (Chun, 2009). Thus, community and industrial unions are scarce or mostly inactive in Korea. Second, the established trade unions in Korea have had little interest in including young, temporary workers in their organizational structures. Although many trade unions in industrialized countries have invested considerable financial resources in organizing young people (Simms et al., 2018; Tapia and Turner, 2018), Korean enterprise unions in large factories have focused only on protecting their members. Thus, organizers of members of the young precariat in Korea can hardly expect to receive sufficient support from established trade unions. Finally, alternative labor movements (such as worker centers in the USA and community unions in Japan) have relatively short histories and there are few successful cases in Korea. Most irregular workers' movements in Korea have limited ability to develop new organizing models for the precariat. This is evident in the low union density of irregular workers in Korea (1.9% in 2017) (Korea National Statistics Office, 2018) despite a long history of irregular workers' movements. Thus, organizers of young workers lack good examples to follow.

Despite these difficult circumstances, the Youth Community Union (Chyeong-nyeon yoonieon in Korean, hereafter the YCU) was established in 2010 as the first union to support the young precariat and improve their working conditions. Although it has some limitations, the YCU is highly regarded as a success and is a model for the union movement of irregular workers in Korea. The accomplishments of the YCU have been emulated by various marginalized groups. For example, the Korea Elder Union for older people was established in 2012, the Arbeit Workers Union for part-timers in 2013, and the Media Writers' Union for freelance broadcasting writers in 2018. This study examines the processes involved in organizing the YCU and the strategies employed to overcome structural barriers. We adopt social movement theory (hereafter SMT) as a source of practical guidance to analyze the processes by which the YCU has organized members of the young precariat. SMT focuses on identifying how geographically dispersed people with similar interests get together and speak with one voice on specific issues (Spicer and Böhm, 2007). Based on SMT, we observe how members of the young precariat overcome the difficulties of organizing and establishing a labor union.

The current study contributes to the literature in several ways. First, we describe how the precariat protects their labor rights. In the neoliberal era, the number of the precariat characterized by low income and insecure employment status has continuously increased (Kalleberg, 2009) and this trend has been accelerated by the recent emergence of platform labor. Platform workers are classified as independent contractors; thus, they are not guaranteed minimum wage, long-term employment, or social welfare (Van Doorn, 2017). The need for more research on how to protect the precariat's labor rights has increased accordingly. Second, the current study shows the possibility of organizing young precarious workers even in a hostile environment. In Korea, the last divided country in the world, socialist ideas have little currency, Korean young people have negative attitudes toward trade unionism, and many are reluctant to participate in union activities (Yoo, 2014). The success of the YCU in this environment may demonstrate how unions can be formed even in adverse social environments. Third, we provide tips to aid in the building of youth labor movements. Lacking support from established trade unions and historical experience of alternative labor movements, young workers need help to organize collective acts. The establishment and activities of the YCU provide a good example that may expand our understanding of how young precarious workers can successfully and independently organize themselves. Finally, previous research has mainly focused on youth labor movements in western societies (for a collection of studies, see Hodder and Kretsos, 2015). However, because conditions differ between countries, we must also examine successful cases in various countries outside western societies. Exploring the Korean case improves our understanding of the complexities of youth labor movements.

Theoretical background

Utilizing SMT as our analytical framework, we investigate the structural barriers that faced the YCU and the measures taken to organize the young precariat in Korea. According to SMT, social movements can be broadly defined as collective challenges by ‘powerless’ people against targeted ‘external’ authorities (King and Soule, 2007; Spicer and Böhm, 2007). The goals of the YCU to organize precarious young workers at the regional level are similar to those of social movements. Therefore, the structural barriers to social movements may in the same way hinder the formation of organizations such as the YCU.

Previous SMT literature has suggested three key barriers that organizers of social movements might face, which were also evident in the formation of the YCU. The first barrier is underdeveloped common identities. Since social movements typically involve a broad spectrum of actors, it is difficult to pinpoint a common identity, which in turn poses a latent threat to the potential of united protests (Hunt and Benford, 2007). Similarly, young temporary workers also lack opportunities to develop common interests and identities in the workplace (Jiang and Korczynski, 2016; Murphy and Turner, 2014). Because regular workers enjoy opportunities to form close friendship networks, they are more likely to develop feelings of social solidarity amongst themselves. Such informal networks of workers within a given workplace can be a stable basis for collectivism (Bain and Taylor, 2000). In contrast, young precarious workers are often dispersed among smaller workplaces and experience frequent transitions between short-term employment and unemployment (Tailby and Pollert, 2011). They have little chance to develop even an informal community of peer workers in their everyday working lives, let alone develop common identities.

The second barrier is the inability to use conventional resistance tactics. As outsiders, most social movements lack institutional channels through which grievances can be heard in the decision-making processes of targeted organizations (King and Soule, 2007). Unions of irregular workers cannot leverage conventional methods of contestation with employers (Heery and Abbott, 2000). In Korea, enterprise unions have been guaranteed institutionalized practices that can influence the corporation's internal decision-making processes. Unions can mobilize hundreds of workers to take collective industrial action on the shop floor and bargain with employers to improve working conditions. However, because young people are geographically scattered among smaller firms, trade unions cannot mobilize hundreds of them to take action. Furthermore, even if they could, irregular workers can easily be replaced by others.

The third barrier is scarce material resources. Most social movements are intended to mobilize powerless people against those with power; therefore, they inherently lack the necessary resources (Edwards and Gillham, 2013). Scholars conducting research on unions of non-standard workers in Japan have identified low levels of human and financial resources as major factors hindering union activism (Royle and Urano, 2012; Suzuki, 2008). Since young irregular workers are dispersed among small workplaces, it is very difficult for union officials to contact them (Jiang and Korczynski, 2016). Long-term membership is also difficult because young irregular workers tend to move in and out of labor markets frequently. The combined difficulties related to recruitment of potential members and low membership numbers contribute to low revenues for unions.

SMT explains how social movements can overcome these structural constraints by employing a variety of tactics. Thus, it can be expected to provide fresh insights and analytical tools to explain the YCU's strategies to deal with the constraints. These strategies employed by the YCU correspond to three perspectives in SMT. The first is the culturalist or identity perspective (Gahan and Pekarek, 2013). Researchers writing from this perspective coined the term ‘communities of coping’ to elucidate the manner in which social movements develop common interests and identities among previously atomized participants (Jiang and Korczynski, 2016). We examine how the YCU has dealt with the barrier of underdeveloped common identities from this perspective.

Second, there is the resource mobilization perspective (Gahan and Pekarek, 2013), which has focused on how social movements supplement their scarce resources (Edwards and Gillham, 2013; Edwards and McCarthy, 2007). Some studies have clarified a variety of mechanisms through which social movements endeavor to acquire alternative resources from internal and external sources (Edwards and Gillham, 2013). For example, scholars have shown that social movements can gain alternative resources by constructing alliances with other civic movements (Manky, 2018). To explain how the YCU overcame the barrier of scarce material resources, we adopt this perspective.

The third is the strategic perspective (Taylor and Van Dyke, 2007; Tilly, 1986). Since most social movements are made up of ‘outsiders’ from the targeted organizations and institutions, they lack the right to intervene in their internal decision-making processes. They must develop a series of strategies to contest the policies or practices with which they disagree. Studies written from the strategic perspective have focused on how social movements develop ‘extra-institutional tactics’ including boycotts and protests as tools of contestation (King, 2008; King and Soule, 2007; McDonnell and King, 2013). In our context, we analyze how young precarious workers develop such ‘extra-institutional’ practices.

In the following section, by utilizing the three perspectives in SMT, we describe how the YCU handled these structural barriers and emerged as an organization representative of the young precariat in Korea.

Research context and methods

The YCU was established by five young temporary workers in March 2010 as the first age-based trade union in Korea. It was aimed at young workers aged between 15 and 39, including not only casual and part-time workers but also unemployed youth and young job seekers. It was started without the support of the two national federations of trade unions in Korea: the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU). Encouraged by the success of young workers organizing themselves into unions in Japan (e.g. Friitaa Union and Shutoken Seinen Union), five young temporary workers established the YCU for the protection of labor rights and the improvement of working conditions for young workers. They learned about cases of Japanese community unions and attempted some successful resistance strategies perceived as suitable for Korean young people. They found that social campaigns targeting mass media and coalition building with civic movements, two strategies that Japanese community unions had frequently utilized, were suitable strategies for the YCU. As described in this study, such union activities have been vital to the YCU's success in protecting young workers' rights.

The YCU is a community union based on region, not specific workplaces. Community-based organizations are suitable for organizing young and temporary workers who frequently change jobs and vacillate between employment and unemployment. The YCU is not affiliated with any national federations of trade unions because most members have assumed that the voices of young temporary workers cannot be heard in the bureaucratic decision-making processes of established trade unions.

In the first year there were only 43 members, but since then membership has grown steadily to approximately 1500 over 7 years. The average age of YCU members is about 30 years; many members work temporary jobs on a contractual basis. The YCU has nine local branches in various regions. Nine full-time union officials work at the national YCU center, which has three departments: the policy development department, in which economic policies regarding youth workers are developed; the organizing department, where innovative approaches to organizing young workers are developed; and the labor counseling department, which offers advice to young workers on employment and labor issues.

To collect and analyze the data, we employed the interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) approach, which enables us ‘to explore in detail how participants are making sense of their personal and social world’ (Smith and Osborn, 2003: 53) and to focus on ‘the meanings particular experiences, events, states hold for participants’ (Smith and Osborn, 2003: 53). As a recently developed qualitative approach, the IPA has become popular in psychological research, providing practical guidance for scholars to explore individuals’ life-worlds (Gill, 2015). Houston and Mullan-Jensen (2012) noted, however, that integrating the IPA and social theory may expand our understanding of individuals’ life-worlds in the social sense, especially the dynamics of power and structure. In this study, we explore how the YCU was established and developed in Korean society through participants’ sense-making of their experiences. Thus, we employed the IPA as an appropriate method of data analysis.

The data were obtained from multiple sources, the primary one of which was interviews. According to the IPA, sampling of research participants must be purposive. Participants who can give important and meaningful information should be recruited. Four categories of YCU members were interviewed: three former chairpersons, three former policy directors, three current union officials (chairperson, policy director, and organizer), and three rank-and-file members. All participants had been with the YCU for over 6 years (2010–2016) and are knowledgeable about the YCU's approach to organizing. Interviews were conducted in 2016. The interviews lasted between 1 and 2 hours and were digitally recorded and then transcribed. We also obtained archival data to validate the information provided by participants, including foundational texts, propaganda pamphlets or brochures, recruiting documents, and newsletters for members.

The analytical procedure followed that of Smith and Osborn (2003). Data analysis was conducted in several stages. The first stage involved labeling each line of data, comparing data, and identifying an emergent set of categories through careful re-examination of the data. In the second stage, the authors identified connections among categories, combining similar categories into higher levels of abstraction. In the end, we obtained three high-level categories representing different strategies to organize young workers and improve their working conditions. Although in the first stage we did not intend to utilize any theory, during the process of data analysis we found that the three perspectives offered by SMT could be useful tools to explain our three main categories. The next section presents the results of our data analysis.

Findings

A brief account of the three high-level categories is as follows. First, ‘communities of coping’ refers to intimate and informal social settings where workers cope with workplace stressors socially (Korczynski, 2003). The YCU offers a supportive social setting where union members can share work experiences and develop a sense of community. In this context, communities of coping can be used as an analytical term to indicate the processes through which collective identities among union members develop.

Second, the YCU has mimicked traditional tactics used in social movements to represent young workers’ interests: the boycott or ‘naming and shaming’ strategy, labor counseling and research activities, and policy cooperation with the Seoul metropolitan government. These activities had not been seriously undertaken by trade unions in Korea. To emphasize the similarities between the YCU's strategies and those of social movements, we labeled this main theme ‘mimicking the tactical repertoire of social movements’.

Finally, we present specific mechanisms through which the YCU acquires financial and human resources external to the union under the heading ‘searching for complementary resources’. Following Edwards and McCarthy's (2007) typology, we identified three resource-mobilizing strategies: aggregation, patronage, and appropriation.

Developing communities of coping

YCU's members embraced it as not only a trade union but as a community. One interviewee (a rank-and-file member) said ‘I understand the “community union” as a social group in which people with similar ages, life courses, tastes, and feelings come together and feel free to talk about life events’. The chairperson of the YCU stated that some members join the organization for social support to deal with strain at work. One member explained her motivation to join as follows:

I had bad feelings about my hard work under terrible working conditions. I often felt a sense of relative deprivation compared with my friends. I just wanted to share my bad moods with someone else and get sympathy.

Active YCU members have a strong sense of ‘we-ness’. Some comments from interviewees are as follows: ‘I frequently contacted YCU members through social network services to receive emotional support when I lived in a foreign country for almost two years’; ‘I have never before seen such a supportive group which helped me heal. I sometimes feel we are in the same boat’; ‘I’m very proud of belonging to the YCU.’ To strengthen social bonds, active members frequently dine together and talk freely about negative work experiences.

As the YCU grows steadily, its activists have tried to build solidarity among members. The chairperson stated that when the organization had less than 50 members, it was relatively easy to connect with newcomers. However, as YCU membership grows, contact with each newcomer is more difficult. To overcome this problem, the organization holds regular orientation meetings where new members are invited to meet the chairperson (YCU, 2018b). At the meetings, the YCU provides various activities. One such activity is a picture-drawing session where newcomers can illustrate their negative work experiences, such as sexual and physical harassment from their boss or rude customer behavior. They are also encouraged to explain their pictures to other participants (YCU, 2016c). Expressing empathy and freely sharing their own stories fosters a sense of belonging to this social group where people of similar age and social condition come together. As one new member stated,

At the orientation meeting, I met people of similar age who had similar experiences with temporary jobs in the service sector. When I heard stories about the harsh working conditions of service jobs, I felt empathy. I enjoyed the emotional exchange. That is when I decided to stay with the YCU.

Current members are also encouraged to get together on a regular basis. The YCU encourages meetings in small groups, called ‘our town meetings’. The chairperson explained that as the YCU grows, its members can no longer come together in the same place on the same day; getting to know each other is therefore difficult. Forming small groups provides opportunities for members to come together regularly. Members residing in the same geographical areas of Seoul come together once a month to eat and drink in a relaxed atmosphere. A feeling of togetherness and belonging develops over a period of several months, during which members discuss difficulties in the workplace and make suggestions about possible union activities to improve their living and employment conditions. Some of these suggestions have been picked up and implemented by YCU officials. For example, in 2016, the YCU conducted a survey of youth job seekers at the suggestion of some of its members during discussion of their experiences of job seeking at the ‘our town meetings’. It included detailed questions about youth job seekers’ living expenses, their parents’ financial support, and their part-time working experiences. The result was the attraction of policy-makers’ attention to the economic problems of youth job seekers.

This communal coping mechanism has generated not only group solidarity, but also identities and behaviors characterized by resistance towards employers. This is in accordance with previous observations made by other researchers. Taylor and Bain (2003), for example, found that emergent, informal communities within workplaces facilitate development of a collectivist mindset among workers, which is the linchpin of strong trade unionism. In the YCU, communal sharing of work experiences and emotional support among union members are accompanied by certain political leanings and actions. Labor issues specific to young people, including non-compliance with minimum wage standards and unpaid internship programs, could be deemed ‘problems’ to be ‘collectively’ acted on when people discover how many other young workers experience the same problems (Benford and Snow, 2000).

A typical example of collective action was the campaign for the payment of weekly holiday allowances, which was started by a rank-and-file YCU member in 2011. While studying the Labor Standards Act with other YCU members, a member working at a coffee franchise on a contractual basis acknowledged that she had not received weekly holiday allowances. According to the Act, employees working 6 days a week should be granted holiday allowances. She demanded that her manager give her full back-payment of the unpaid allowances. Even after receiving her dues, she embarked on a campaign that transformed the individual labor dispute into a nationwide issue. She realized that other employees of the same coffee franchise had similarly not received any information about the allowances, and that almost all YCU members working in other coffee franchises faced the same problem. She felt deep empathy for her coworkers (and fellow union members) and decided to organize the campaign to pressure all coffee franchises in Korea to pay their temporary workers the proper allowances. In company with other union members, she researched labor conditions of part-time workers in coffee chains and learned that 81.2% of the 220 coffee shops did not pay their workers the holiday allowances (YCU, 2011b). Drawing upon this evidence, the YCU announced their intentions to file lawsuits against these coffee franchises, which, being under threat, decided to pay the holiday allowances (YCU, 2011c). This campaign is considered to be one of the most successful of all YCU protests and has contributed to wider public recognition of the YCU (YCU, 2016a).

Mimicking the tactical repertoire of social movements

Human rights groups and environmental protection movements have attacked firms by disclosing previously hidden information about labor rights violations to the mass media. Threatened by possible reputational damage and consequent financial impairment, the targeted firms have no choice but to take immediate action to change the business practices in question (Bartley and Child, 2014). This strategy is called ‘naming and shaming’. When challenging the policies and practices of corporations, the YCU mobilizes it as the major contentious practice (Yoo, 2015). By appealing to larger audiences through the mass media, the YCU can amplify the message without having to mobilize thousands of people in the streets.

This strategy has been recognized among YCU activists as one of the most influential methods of contestation as a result of the campaign to abolish the 30-minute delivery system in pizza chains, which achieved significant concessions from the targeted firm, Domino Pizza, in 2011. In December 2010, a young temporary worker delivering pizza by motorcycle collided with a car and died. Hearing of this tragic accident, the YCU claimed that Domino Pizza should abolish the rule of 30-minute pizza delivery, which was identified as the main cause for his death. Members of the YCU and other social movement activists allied with the campaign developed innovative ways to attract the attention of the public, including a so-called ‘Twitter demonstration’. Large screens were set up in front of the targeted pizza chain's headquarters displaying Twitter messages sent by consumers with the ‘#no30service’ hashtag. Activists also set up an online petition and obtained high levels of support from citizens. Threatened by the ever-increasing pressure of its own customers, Domino Pizza signed an agreement to abolish the 30-minute pizza delivery rule. As previous studies have shown, union use of social media (e.g. Twitter and Facebook) encourages bystanders to voice their grievances against targeted firms and give support to union social campaigns (Hodder and Houghton, 2015; Upchurch and Grassman, 2016).

Distinctive features of the YCU's naming and shaming strategy can be described in detail as follows. First, as targets of campaigns the YCU chose high-status companies that are representatives of industries. The bigger and more famous the targeted firm is, the more attention the campaigns get from the public and mass media. A recent example is the boycott against the Lotte Group, one of the most famous Korean Chaebols. Young irregular workers at the Lotte Hotel were required to sign an employment contract every day. One young hotel employee complained about this to his manager because he thought that the daily contract enabled employers to avoid payment of various benefits to which the worker would otherwise be entitled. The young worker was fired, which provoked the YCU to engage in a boycott against the Lotte Group.

Second, the YCU examines the working conditions of members of the young precariat through labor counseling and a variety of research activities. According to the chairperson of the YCU, these activities – including conducting research and holding forums – are intended to reveal previously unknown facts about their unpleasant working conditions to the public. As media coverage of these problematic issues increases, the government is pushed to take action to address them. The most remarkable example is the minimum wage research conducted in 2010. The YCU surveyed 446 temporary workers in 427 convenience stores (YCU, 2011a) and the results were as follows: 66% of them were paid less than the legal minimum wage. This situation attracted unusual levels of attention from the media, leading to the government's immediate intervention. A former YCU chairperson said:

If we're going to create policies for youth employment, we need to know exactly the real conditions of young workers. But there is little research which produces reliable information on young people's working lives. We think that we should do research activities to investigate how young people work and what problems they might face. So we have started by doing field research when we have campaigned. As the media has been interested in every research activity we conducted, survey has become our main strategy.

Third, the YCU organizes theatrical performances during street demonstrations. For example, when the Lotte Group was targeted in 2015, the YCU organized a mock award ceremony in the square and presented a ‘youth exploitation award’ to the current chairman of the Lotte Group. By organizing various forms of humorous street performances, the YCU succeeded in garnering high levels of media attention.

In the end, the Lotte Hotel announced its commitment to deal with unfair labor contracting practices for young temporary workers. YCU officials in the organizing department made the following statement:¹

We have little power resources, so we need to get media attention to gain some concessions from the targeted firms. The targeted firms sit at the negotiating table only when there is a lot of media coverage about protests. We did a lot of performances and street demonstrations. The more fun and entertaining the street demonstration is, the more attention from the media can be obtained.

Furthermore, theatrical performances can encourage union members’ participation in protests. Young workers tend to be reluctant to participate in conventional strike action such as wearing red headbands, raising fists up to the sky, and crying slogans like ‘labor emancipation’. They are not accustomed to these actions and are likely to perceive them as boring and unimaginative. One interviewee taking part in the Lotte Hotel protest said that the theatrical performance was fun and exciting; through participation in this performance, he found himself increasingly immersed in the street demonstrations.

In addition to extra-institutional tactics (e.g. ‘naming and shaming’), the YCU also seeks out alternative institutional channels through which to accomplish its political goals. In 2012, the newly elected mayor of Seoul Metropolitan City expressed interest in the issue of youth unemployment. The YCU contacted the mayor and proposed policies concerning the issues surrounding youth unemployment. With the support of the mayor, the YCU participated in the process of drafting the Ordinance on Youth Jobs, which was passed in January 2013. It contains 15 policies, including the introduction of a mandatory quota system for youth employment in the Seoul metropolitan government, and the compulsory use of standard resumes for youth employment (YCU, 2012).

Policy cooperation between the YCU and the Seoul metropolitan government continues. In 2013, the YCU signed the Bill of Rights for Youth in Part-time Jobs in conjunction with the Seoul metropolitan government and 10 other franchise enterprises. This treaty articulated the rights of part-time workers (e.g. the use of standard employment contracts) and the responsibility of the government to protect these rights. In 2015, the YCU also participated in the process of drafting the Basic Ordinance of Youth. According to this ordinance, the Seoul metropolitan government and youth organizations create a joint governance structure: the Committee for Youth Policy. Various youth organizations, including the YCU, work together on the committee to develop youth policies for Seoul. The committee proposed a legislative package called the 2020 Seoul Youth Guarantee, which was passed in 2015. This package is composed of support plans for youth workers in public sector jobs, the construction of public rental housing for youth, and plans for a monthly allowance for unemployed youth. When asked about its successful outcomes, YCU officials in the policy development department responded as follows:

I think a joint governance structure between youth organizations and the Seoul metropolitan government is one of the best outcomes we have ever achieved. We have worked hard to expand the governance process to involve more youth organizations and young people. I think it is a valuable opportunity for young people to intervene in the policy-making process and pursue their own interests.

The YCU has been also involved in drafting policies in close cooperation with the National Assembly and the Ministry of Employment and Labor. For example, a bill for young part-time workers was jointly designed and proposed in July 2016 in cooperation with a lawmaker. The bill includes an amendment to the Labor Standards Act to specify the exact scope of work in labor contracts, prohibit verbal abuse, and clarify wage payment methods. As another example, the YCU was involved in establishing student internship guidelines with the Ministry of Employment and Labor. The YCU sought to incorporate the interests of young people by playing an advisory role in designing the guidelines (YCU, 2015b).

Searching for complementary resources

Edwards and McCarthy (2007) listed the fundamental mechanisms by which resources can be acquired, and noted three specific methods to access external resources: aggregation, patronage, and appropriation. Aggregation refers to collecting resources from widely disparate individuals. Patronage refers to receiving financial and material support from other organizations and institutions. Appropriation is indirect access to various resources through solidarity with other organizations. These three methods help us understand how the YCU can obtain and utilize resources to achieve its purposes.

First, the YCU requests financial donations from individuals outside the union and recruits volunteers for union activities. Because core YCU members took part in student movements when they were college students, they find it relatively easy to ask for help from activists in other social movements whom they met during their college days. The YCU recruits people over the age of 40 as supporting members. As of February 2016, there were around 500 supporting members, each of whom had donated 10–50 thousand Korean won (roughly US$9–45) per month, representing about 30% of the total income of the organization (YCU, 2017a, 2017b). In addition, the YCU holds a biannual Supporters' Night, a dinner party to which ordinary citizens, union members, and activists from other social movements are invited. At this event, participants receive an update on the latest activities of the union and have the opportunity to pledge their financial support. Funds raised during the event amount to the annual salary for one full-time union official (YCU, 2017a, 2018a). In addition, the YCU runs labor consultation and education on labor laws for short-term young contract workers. Currently, seven labor attorneys and lawyers voluntarily provide counseling and education courses on labor laws.

The second method of acquiring resources, patronage, is also relevant here. The YCU has received occasional financial support from the two national-level union federations (KCTU and FKTU). Although these two union federations, in the early days, showed little interest in the establishment of an organization for youth workers, they began to pay attention to the YCU's activities as it gained in reputation. In addition, YCU activists have acquired funds from the Korean government. For instance, in 2016, the YCU acquired financial resources related to a research project involving monitoring the working conditions of young, part-time workers (YCU, 2017a). The YCU has also received material resources from the Seoul metropolitan government. Following the Basic Youth Ordinance in 2015, the Seoul government established the Youth Hub, which aims to provide support for youth organizations in two ways: space rental and financial support. The YCU leased a part of the Youth Hub's space at a competitive rate until 2017. The YCU has also secured the Youth Hub's financial support. For example, in 2016, two major activities were financially supported by the Youth Hub: investigating unfair labor practices in large Korean firms and producing educational materials on labor laws (YCU, 2015a, 2016b).

Appropriation is the third method by which the YCU secures resources. Solidarity with other civic organizations plays a major role in supplementing scarce YCU human resources. The coalition building has been accomplished in part due to the YCU core members' personal networks with civic movement groups, which were formed during their college days. The YCU has actively cooperated with civic groups and other trade unions during collective action to pressure corporations with problematic labor practices. How alliance building supplements human resources can be seen in the campaign to abolish the 30-minute delivery system in pizza restaurant chains. When asked about factors contributing to the success of the campaign, YCU activists admitted that the Pizza Hut union played a central role. The Pizza Hut union, composed of managerial employees, actively cooperated with the YCU and applied pressure on the employer to abolish the 30-minute pizza delivery rule.

Appropriation, or coalition building with other civic organizations, enables the YCU to attain other kinds of resources. By affiliating with better known or institutionalized actors, the organization gains legitimacy (a moral resource) in the eyes of the public, allowing protests to achieve high visibility. Appropriation also provides a cultural resource: specialized knowledge about organizing successful protests and representing young workers' interests by allying with other social activists. For example, when the YCU participated in the drafting of the ordinance, they received useful advice about effective negotiation strategies from the Korean Health and Medical Workers' Union (KHMWU). In the words of a former YCU chairperson,

When preparing to negotiate with the Seoul metropolitan government, we contacted KHMWU officials to learn how to negotiate with government agencies. Not only do KHMWU officials negotiate about benefits for their members, but they also negotiate with several government agencies about policies that serve the public interest. Based on know-how of the KHMWU, we proposed policies which enhance all young people's lives to Seoul metropolitan government.

Discussion

As the number of temporarily employed young people has increased, especially after the financial meltdown of 2007, the class of workers known as the young precariat has proliferated, workers who often occupy jobs with poor working conditions and who have tried to form their own trade union. However, organizing of young workers is challenging for activists because of numerous obstacles. This study investigated how the YCU was established to protect the rights of young precarious workers and how various practices helped the YCU to be successful.

Drawing on previous literature, we identified three major obstacles which prevent successful organizing of the young precariat. First, because so many young precarious workers are dispersed among small service firms, they have less opportunity to establish collective identities. Second, young workers are less likely to use conventional institutional means (e.g. strikes and collective bargaining) to influence internal corporate decision-making processes. Third, because they change jobs frequently and spend long periods of time unemployed, the young precariat are difficult to recruit as trade union members. In addition, the financial and human resources necessary for successful organizing are difficult to obtain.

To overcome these obstacles, the support of established trade unions is necessary (Simms et al., 2018). For example, the Public and Commercial Services Union in the UK created the Young Members' Network within its organizational structure, where young workers can discuss various issues related to youth employment. In some cases, existing unions have offered leadership training programs to organizers of young workers (e.g. Next Wave in the USA). Moreover, experiments with new models of organizing workers in the past (e.g. community unionism and worker centers) provide an important foundation which facilitates building of young workers' unions. However, young precarious workers in Korea had to build their own union without support from established trade unions. They also lack sufficient past experience of how to organize an alternative union. In order to exist at all, the YCU has been forced to find innovative ways of organizing young precarious workers.

To explore how the YCU was successfully established, we identified three processes through which it has coped with the three obstacles mentioned above, drawing on SMT as an analytical framework. First, the creation of social solidarity among members relates to the concept of communities of coping. The YCU has made extensive efforts to provide a safe space in which members can listen to and help each other. This coping process serves as a basis for common identity as union members (e.g. Jiang and Korczynski, 2016). Second, by mimicking the tactics used in social movements, the YCU has made significant progress. For example, through the ‘naming and shaming’ strategy, traditionally used by civic organizations, the YCU has gained some concessions from targeted firms. Furthermore, in cooperation with the Seoul metropolitan government, political parties, and lawmakers, the organization has engaged in the development of policies to protect the young precariat. Third, supplementation of limited external resources can be understood from the resource mobilization perspective. To obtain various resources, the YCU has recognized the importance of connecting with other civic organizations. In addition, it has received considerable support from government agencies.

In this study, we found that the YCU differs in several respects from youth movements in other countries. First, the YCU was created independently with little support from established trade unions. While most youth movements in other countries are affiliated with established trade unions or exist as internal interest groups within existing unions, the YCU has selectively collaborated with the established trade unions without solely relying on them. Second, as part of its strategy to secure resources, the YCU has assumed a pragmatic position without publicizing its adherence to a particular political ideology. Its resource demands have been met by various sources such as political parties, metropolitan governments, and diverse civic organizations, including the established trade unions. Third, because collective bargaining rights cannot be exercised, the YCU has developed extra-institutional tactics (e.g. the naming and shaming strategy) and cooperated with institutional actors regarding policy development. While use of the media as a protest strategy is common in movements of the young precariat (Della Porta et al., 2015), activities such as designing policy and representing young workers' interests in political domains (e.g. building a joint governance structure with Seoul City and monitoring election promises made by political candidates) are prominent strategies that distinguish the YCU from other youth labor movements. Some scholars in Korea have even regarded the YCU as a pseudo-political party for young people (Kim, 2017).

Conclusion

For the young precariat, a new emerging class of youth workers who are paid low wages and must deal with job insecurity, protecting their labor rights can be difficult because their fragmented working conditions prevent them from coming together to form a trade union. Some have argued that the increasing number of young precarious workers has resulted in low union density and weakened the influence of trade unions (Gumbrell-McCormick, 2011). By examining the formation of the YCU, this study has shown that the young precariat can create new associational models different from familiar forms of trade unionism (enterprise unionism in the case of Korea).

The current study provides some useful insights. First, although the proliferation of platform labor has led to an increase in the number of workers placed in the precarious working situations, their labor rights have not been discussed. Platform workers are classified as independent contractors and thus their labor rights, including unionization and collective bargaining, are not protected. We hope that this study provides insights into how to organize precarious workers at the regional level and protect their labor rights. In our view, the YCU can be one of the promising organizing models for the platform workers in that they do not belong to a particular workplace. In Korea, riders working for food delivery platforms have organized themselves into the trade union called ‘the Rider Union’, which follows the organizing strategies of the YCU and other community unions of precarious workers.

Second, this study shows the possibility of how movements involving young precarious workers can be successful in countries unfavorable to labor movements. In those countries, activists of youth labor movements must seek resources from various sources because of lack of support from trade unions. The YCU showed how many resources can be obtained by forming alliances with different actors. Third, to organize young workers and gather resources successfully, young workers' unions are better not to commit publicly to a specific political ideology. To collaborate with a broad spectrum of progressive groups, the YCU has made clear its progressive political views about workers' rights while avoiding choosing a specific political color. Instead of being involved in the polemic on social reform or revolution, the YCU has taken a pragmatic position, narrowing its focus to young people and precarious workers' rights. This stance has allowed the YCU to affiliate with diverse progressive actors (civic groups and political parties) according to whatever social issues were relevant at the time. Fourth, to protect labor rights of the young precariat, it is no longer necessary to see employers as sole negotiating partners. Because young precarious workers cannot negotiate on an equal footing with employers regarding working conditions in countries hostile to labor movements, they must seek solutions on a national or society level. The YCU, by negotiating and associating with governmental agencies (the metropolitan government, political parties, and lawmakers), succeeded in developing policies to protect the labor rights of young workers. Thus, engaging in activities on a national or society level seems to be an effective way to protect young workers' labor rights.

Another contribution of this study is that we apply SMT to explain the development of the YCU. In recent years, trade unions have recast themselves as social movements for the purpose of organizing marginalized social groups including young people, women, and immigrants. This new form of organization has recently attracted many practitioners and academics who are interested in the revitalization of union organizing. However, few studies have relied on the social movement literature to investigate innovative organizing strategies of trade unions (for exceptions, see Gahan and Pekarek, 2013; Jiang and Korczynski, 2016; Kelly, 2005). Even if they applied SMT to examine trade unionism, previous studies have selected one among three theoretical lenses of SMT and thus have focused on a particular aspect of organizing strategy. To bridge this research gap, we simultaneously utilized three theoretical lenses of SMT – identity formation, resource mobilization, and strategy development – to gain a more nuanced understanding of both the structural obstacles faced by the YCU and its coping strategies to overcome them. In this way, we tried to demonstrate that a more comprehensive and systematic engagement with SMT can be useful in explicating trade unions' innovative strategies to organize the unorganized.

Despite its contributions, this study also has several limitations. First, it examines a case in one country, which raises concerns about the generalizability of our results. Although it is undeniable that a qualitative study on a single case gives us a better understanding of the phenomenon in question, it still has its limitations. A comparative case study of different nations would be helpful, as the diverse social and economic situations in which the precariat live could be considered, and the generalizability of our results beyond the Korean context would be enhanced. Second, this study focused on only one trade union, the YCU. After the emergence of the YCU, other unions for workers in unstable employment situations have been established in Korea. By investigating the formation of these other trade unions, researchers could identify more strategies for protecting the labor rights of the precariat. Third, as a qualitative case study, the current research explored how members of the YCU perceive and interpret the union's activities. However, this study relied heavily on the opinions of leading union members, as we were unable to gather enough information about how rank-and-file members see the union policies. A survey of the opinions of rank-and-file members would provide more extensive knowledge about the process of forming the YCU.

Based on the above-mentioned limitations, we suggest some directions for future research. First, cross-national comparative studies on youth labor movements are needed. Organizing young workers looks different across countries because of differences in institutional context, including union density, dominant forms of trade unions, and history of labor movements. Where union density is high, most trade unions are industrial, and where there is a long history of labor movements, established trade unions are likely to provide active support for young workers' movements and young workers may be more willing to join existing unions. In other cases, young workers may establish alternative movements to represent their rights with less union support. Clearly, the institutional context can create differences in ways of organizing young precarious workers. In future, cross-national comparative studies will help us understand other reasons why diverse forms of youth labor movements have developed.

Second, there is a need to explore factors that cause differences between movements within the same context. Previous studies have shown that social movements can be affected by various factors, such as demographic background and political ideologies of activists, political opportunity structures, and so on (Yang and Chae, 2018). These factors cause differences between youth labor movements in the same country in terms of organizational structure, organizing strategies, and methods of contestation. A more comprehensive understanding of the factors that facilitate or hinder such movements would be valuable.

As the number of young precarious workers continues to grow in various nations, there is an increasing need to examine their efforts to organize themselves across a variety of contexts. Because of their employment instability, the precariat tend to be regarded as actors with no collective power. Some gloomily predict that the density and influence of trade unions will be weakened in the near future (Gumbrell-McCormick, 2011) and that therefore it will be even more difficult for the precariat to organize unions. Based on the YCU case, we show that the precariat have the will and competence to voice their interests, inventing a creative associational model for collective action. By revealing their ability to create a new organizational model to protect labor rights even in a rapidly changing economic environment, we have attempted to change the gloomy outlook on the future of this group of workers into a hopeful expectation. Further research is needed to examine a variety of new organizational models for the protection of the labor rights of the precariat.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Kyunguk Yang

Note

Kyunguk Yang is a PhD candidate at the School of Business, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea. He is a researcher of new forms of union organizing, with a particular focus on how workers of non-traditional employment status can organize themselves. He is currently undertaking research on the emerging ‘gig’ economy, platform labor, and labor issues related to platform workers.

Yeon Joo Chae is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior/Human Resource Management at the Department of Business Administration, Chonbuk National University, Jeonju, Korea. Her main research interests focus on how organizational structures and processes influence, and are influenced by, cognition, emotions, and behaviors of individuals, including decision making, organizational identity and identification, leadership, and paradoxical management. Her recent research focuses on labor issues related to emotional labor and precarious work.

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