Hotel Workers’ Big-Character Posters Sparked Class Action Sexual Harassment Lawsuit

“Lotte Hotel Strike and Class Action Sexual Harassment Lawsuit” Series, Part 1: The Truth Revealed On the Third Day of the Strike

 

By Hee-jeong

Published: August 18, 2021

Translated by Jun Jihai

 

On June 29th at 3:00 a.m., over 2,500 riot police—including a counter-terrorist unit, also known as the solgae [black kite] unit—burst into a small-sized banquet hall in Lotte Hotel. Inside the hall were about 1,000 of the hotel’s workers. They had piled up chairs and other furniture to barricade the door but to no avail.

On June 29th, 2000, public authorities forcefully quelled the Lotte Hotel Strike. ⓒ Korea Federation of Service Worker's Union

 

The suppression was familiar: law enforcement in 2000 and the military regime of the 1980’s

 

People who were confined in the hall still remember that day when they “were choked by smoke,” “saw curtains catching fire,” and “wrote S.O.S. on the window to ask for help.” Through screaming and crying, they could hear intermittent thuds—the sounds of truncheons hitting human bodies.

 

“We were on the second floor asleep when we heard about a possible intrusion by the police mobilized by the government, so we moved to the thirty-sixth floor. […] They slid flash grenades and smoke bombs under the door, so we couldn’t see a thing or breathe well. And then I saw a policeman attack a male union member right in front of me, swinging a truncheon and stamping on him with military boots, which made me pass out for a second […] Blood ran down the fallen man’s head and then his body began to spasm,” said Ms. Lee, a union member, during testimony for the “Incident Investigation Report on the Lotte Hotel Strike and Its Suppression by Police Forces.”

 

This is not something of the 1980s when Korea was under the rule of military dictators. It happened in 2000, the era people referred to as the “new millennium.” The government itself decided to deploy the riot police at the site, giving them one goal: breaking up the strike. The deployment took place on the 21st day of the strike.

 

At the crack of dawn, reporters started to spread news of the violence of the previous night.

“Serious Abuse of Public Power in ‘Reckless’ Strike Suppression” Munwha Ilbo, June 30th, 2000

“Police Drank Alcohol Before Breaking Up Lotte Hotel Strike Sit-In” MBC, July 1st, 2000

 

The violence got so out of hand that there were suspicions that the police had been drinking alcohol beforehand (in the hotel rooms in which the police were staying, workers found the minibars empty). What raised the most severe public outrage was the assault against pregnant women.

 

“Although approximately ten pregnant women were at the strike site, riot police used force brutally, throwing smoke bombs and spraying fire extinguishers. […] How dare you abuse your power like that toward pregnant women? We, women laborers, are devastated by the police violence crushing mothers’ most basic desire to protect their child”—excerpt from a written statement by Korea Women’s Associations United in protest against the violent strike break-up on June 30th, 2000.

The authorities came to face public outrage for using violence to break up the strike. The above is a screenshot from an interview in a news program at that time. ⓒ MBC

Police flatly denied assaulting pregnant women, claiming they had merely spotted a pregnant woman having cold sweats and “safely” escorted her. Contrary to the claim, a series of accusations followed by the pregnant women. And many witnesses corroborated those accusations. The police arrested 1,125 workers that night. More than thirty people were hurt: burns, head injuries, leg fractures. Some of the pregnant women were lucky enough that their unborn child was unharmed; some were not so lucky.

 

You should be in the kitchen

 

Lawyers for a Democratic Society undertook an investigation, which came to fruition as a report titled “Survey of the Members of Lotte Hotel Union for Fact Finding on the Arrest Process” (2000) Twenty years after its publication, I happened to read that report. I was shocked by the brutal violence, furious at the abuse of power, and speechless at the fact that the people who did it were “allowed” to (none of the attackers were punished for abusing their power). At some parts, I couldn’t hold back my bitter laughter. The world doesn’t change so easily, I thought.

 

The following remarks by riot police were directed toward pregnant women:

“Ahjumma, go home and do some prenatal care.”

“You should be in the kitchen cooking a meal to shovel into your face.”

 

I am no stranger to such remarks. We hear them whenever there is a scuffle about priority seats for pregnant women; for example, “Why did you leave your house in that condition? Stay at home!” People never just say “have a meal” but always add conditions like “that you cooked and set the table for.” Pregnant women are not welcome in public places. People are uncomfortable with their presence. People become upset at having them in sight. Just like the riot police did that day.

 

Wherever they go, pregnant women (in fact, most women) are treated as “jib-saram [a person who is supposed to be at home]” It is commonly overlooked that they are also workers and members of society. The site for the 21-day strike was also the workplace for the Lotte Hotel workers. Of course, some of them were women—about four hundred in all. Pregnant women were also workers as well as members of the union. But for the government and for Lotte Hottel, which agreed to the deploying of riot police to the strike site, “pregnant women” were never on their minds. They seemed to fail to consider their existence. No wonder they never came up with any protective measures for pregnant women before deploying.

 

I couldn’t stop asking myself—if the hotel was so accustomed to considering pregnant women invisible, didn’t it probably treat the women like that before? Even in the “peaceful” times? as After all, the phrase “breeding season” appeared during the interviews I conducted. It’s the expression that Lotte Hotel workers could not scrub from their memories even though twenty years had passed.

 

One of the executives had said to some pregnant women, “Is it breeding season? Why is everyone getting knocked up?”

 

This observation reflected not just the awful character of this perpetrator, but also how the company saw pregnant women workers. He said later that he was joking. And nobody took the matter seriously at that time, regarding him as not deserving any sanctions or penalty. It was a long time before his words were considered problematic. That moment of shift came when the workers went on strike. Otherwise, everything would have stayed the same.

 

Tourism boomed, but Lottel Hotel tightened the purse strings

 

Before this, the union had not gone on strike for twelve years. But it was becoming impossible to keep working. In 2000, the third year after the Asian financial crisis of 1997, words like “layoffs” or “outsourcing” started to spread widely. Despite the gloomy situation, big department stores were flooded with customers, and the weak won led duty-free shops to take off. The number of tourists visiting Korea topped five million for the first time that year.

 

The tourism industry enjoyed that unexpected boom. Instead of a bonus, however, Lotte Hotel workers received a form to sign to return their bonuses to the company. The circumstances outside of the hotel were “hellish” in those days, and for the hotel, this was a chance to cut the budget and lay people off. It also implemented a notorious measure favored by many companies: “either you or your partner,” which forced one partner in any married couples to resign. It was very clear to see which partner the company wanted to keep, and as a result, dozens of women had to leave the company.

 

Lotte Hotel didn’t stop there. The company asked its union to agree to the replacement of more regular workers with irregular, contracted workers. Over half of the 2,800 workers were already irregular ones. These changes all happened within two years after the Asian financial crisis began. At that pace, the company would soon become hellish, too. Ultimately, the union declared a strike.

Lotte Hotel union workers waging a publicity war during the strike. ⓒ Korea Federation of Service Worker's Union

One day turned into seventy-four days

 

On June 10th, 2000, about a thousand protesters, who were Lotte Hotel workers as well as members of the union, filled the space in front of the hotel. Bright red and black banners were hung around this four-star hotel. One of them read, “Gum-maker Gives A-Pack-of-Gum-Worth Salary!”

 

“I was going to go on a family trip the day after the strike began. ‘What should I do?’ I wondered. Then my colleague said, ‘Hey, it’ll be over before sunrise. It will take only a day.’ So I joined the strike, bringing just a toothbrush.”

 

This is a memory recalled by union member Choe Misuk (now an auditor for Lotte Duty Free Labor Union). At that time an eleventh-year employee, Ms. Choi had never gone on strike in her entire life. She casually said, "See you tomorrow," to her family and headed to Lotte Hotel.

 

“It hadn’t ended by nighttime [on June 10]. We were told to gather in front of the hotel at dawn on the first day of the sit-in protest [June 11]. My heart was beating fast, but I felt somewhat assured because there were more than a thousand of us.”

 

It was the beginning of a strike that lasted not one day but seventy-four days.

“The next day, I called my family and told them to pack my things. I said I would meet them at the airport. But I called again, telling them I would catch up tomorrow, so they should go without me. After rescheduling and rescheduling, I eventually gave up. Later, my family came and dropped off a box of mandarins from Jeju Island.”

 

What filled dozens of big-character posters

 

Protesters had to remain stationed in front of the hotel around the clock. To pass the time, they organized various activities, both small and large. They moved to duty-free shops for silent protests or marched through Jung-gu, the area around Lotte Hotel, or learned simple dance routines in the hotel’s outdoor parking lot where the strike was also taking place, or changed the lyrics of songs and sang along. When labor unions from nearby neighborhoods came over in the evenings to express solidarity, they held cultural events.

 

On the third day of the strike, someone put down a simple program on the daily record: “June 12th, 2000: Plastering big-character posters [daejabo] on the hotel building’s walls.” No one knew what kind of impact it would bring.

 

“Strikes normally involve things like big-character posters. We wrote down what we thought was unfair. Things like ‘the company did this and my boss did that, so fix it.’ We plastered them on the front of the building. Other unions and passersby read them and exclaimed, ‘That’s really serious,’” said Gim Geumju, then a member of the Lotte Hotel Labor Union and now a commissioner of the Lotte Duty-Free Shop Labor Union.

 

What filled dozens of posters were accusations of sexual harassment by supervisors, such as a manager or division chief.

The strike scene in 2000. Workers wrote big-character posters on how they were unfairly treated by their supervisors, exposing serious sexual harassment. ⓒ Korea Federation of Service Worker's Union

Here is how Im Hyesuk, who was the director of the women’s affairs division of the Korean Metal Workers’ Federation (the former organization of the Korean Metal Workers’ Union under KCTU), put it: “In 2000, the Lotte Hotel Strike took place. During the strike, the union leaders told me there was talk about such experiences and requested training for sexual harassment prevention. I gave lectures in the street. At a makeshift booth, a tent in the parking lot before the hotel’s gate, sitting next to protesters. At the end of the lesson, I handed out papers to the union members, having them write about any sexual harassment or misconduct they heard about or experienced. I collected the papers, and their answers were too shocking. So was the volume of them. [I thought,] ‘It can’t go on like this.’ That’s why the task force was created.”

 

The sexual harassment cases reported by the employees totaled around 150 that day. Due to the seriousness of the matter, the labor union immediately conducted further investigation. Seven out of ten employees reported they had heard inappropriate jokes, comparisons, or comments about their looks. There were also frequent demands for physical contact, such as pressure to dance with a partner at company dinners.  So, the union banded together with women’s and civil groups and established the Lotte Hotel Task Force on Sexual Harassment.

 

It was the moment when something that had been considered a “joke” or “fun” was redefined as an “issue.” That unnamed matter had been hushed up or treated as a personal problem until women gathered together and talked freely and finally put a name tag on it: sexual harassment in the workplace. It led to Korea’s first and only class action suit against workplace sexual harassment.

 

References

Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (Ed.). (2000). “Incident Investigation Report on the Lotte Hotel Strike and Its Suppression by Police Forces,” “Survey of Members of the Lotte Hotel Union for Fact Finding on the Arrest Process,” “The Lesson of the 74 Days of the Lotte Hotel Strike.” Lotte Hotel Strike White Paper.

Kim, So-yeon (December 2013). “Pureness Was Crushed on June 29, 2000” and other related articles in “Beautiful Resistance 2.0: The Lottel Hotel Strike”, Saram Magazine Na-Dle, Issue 14

 

Hee-jeong is a chronicler-worker who creates a record of the work of people who fight, endure, and live for labor rights. Hee-jeong is the author of The Collapsed Worker and Queer in the Next Cubicle, and a co-author of Women Whose Jobs Vanished.

 

*Original article: https://www.ildaro.com/9123