KOREAN WHITE-COLLAR UNIONS’ JOURNEY TO LABOR SOLIDARITY: THE HISTORIC PATH FROM ENTERPRISE TO INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM

Abstract

Industrialization in capitalist societies ushered in the growth of trade unions and the development of union activities of industrial workers. In the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries in the West when unionism began, trade unions took diverse forms. These forms varied by society and were significantly influenced by the country’s specific historical background and socioeconomic and cultural conditions. Yet such diverse union structures began to merge into “industrial unionism” in the late nineteenth century, which embraced all types of workers within the boundaries of an industry. Industrial unionism has been considered the organizational form that most effectively ensures the collective power of trade unions and their sociopolitical sway over contending forces, notably, the state and employers’ associations, and thus has remained a prototypical union system. Accordingly, nonwestern societies and latecomers to unionism in the West have modeled their unions on the basis of the industrial union structure.

Citation

Suh, D. (2003), "KOREAN WHITE-COLLAR UNIONS’ JOURNEY TO LABOR SOLIDARITY: THE HISTORIC PATH FROM ENTERPRISE TO INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM", Cornfield, D.B. and Mccammon, H.J. (Ed.) Labor Revitalization: Global Perspectives and New Initiatives (Research in the Sociology of Work, Vol. 11), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 153-180. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-2833(03)11007-2