Founding Declaration of the Korean Institute of Labor Safety and Health

October 24, 2003

Even as we speak, diseases, accidents, and deaths continue unabated in workplaces.

This is because intensified labor demands and on-site control, pushed to murderous levels to satisfy the greed of capital, are suffocating workers. The so-called restructuring, justified under the guise of rationality and efficiency, is nothing more than the rational and efficient exploitation of labor. What remains for workers is arduous labor, broken bodies, and unstable lives.

​​To break free from these shackles, relentless struggle and action to seize workers’ own control over the workplace are urgently needed.

However, the greed of capital is vast and cunning, crushing struggling workers mercilessly while setting traps of labor division and labor-management cooperation to block the fighting power of the workplace. It will not tolerate any resistance or struggle.

Now is the time for the labor movement to break free from labor-management cooperation and proxy representation and organize the unity and unwavering struggle of the working class. The labor and health movement must decisively shake off the limitations of sectoral movements and dependence on specialization to contribute to this effort.

We hereby declare that we will take the lead in the labor and health movement, guided by the principles of on-site presence, class consciousness, and professionalism. Our on-site presence means organizing workers on the front lines and identifying leaders through daily practice and struggle. Our class consciousness means maintaining a class perspective that remains unwavering in the face of capital’s divisive tactics and attempts to co-opt us. Our professionalism transcends the limitations of specialization and sectarianism to raise the strategic banner of the labor movement in the current era.

We clearly recognize that the task before us is to build a national center that transcends the boundaries of workplaces and regions, shatters the divisions imposed by capital, and ensures the solidarity of a class-based labor and health movement.

The Korean Institute of Labor Safety and Health will relentlessly struggle until all workers can secure healthy working conditions and gain control over their workplaces, becoming the true masters of their labor.

 

20th Anniversary Statement of the Korean Institute of Labor Safety and Health  

October 2023

Capitalism is revealing its crisis in every area of our lives. Climate and ecological crises, extreme inequality and the crisis of democracy, a crisis of reproduction with uncertain prospects for the next generation as well as for life today and tomorrow. The bodies and minds of the people who work in this system are also in crisis. The unity and struggle of working people is crucial to change this system of total crisis, but this is not easy for those of us who have been divided by the crises of the last 20 years. We need a new opportunity.

We have always believed that it is the value of “dignity, life and equality of working people,” and the aspiration for this in South Korean society has never been higher. Despite our vast differences in occupation, industry, employment type, region, nationality, and gender we can unite to change the system that violates the dignity, life, and equality of working people. We can do this while embracing these differences. This is why we are moving towards becoming an ‘open organization’ where everyone who wants to change a world where profit makes people sick and injured can become a member and work together.

The 20-year-old Korean Institute of Labor Safety and Health will build a nationwide movement that defends the dignity and life of working people without being confined to their respective workplaces, regions, and identities. We will bridge the divides between productive and reproductive labor, and paid and unpaid labor to protect the dignity and lives of working people. With the dignity and lives of working people as our banner, we will create opportunities to overcome inequality and division. We will make it clear that, in far broader regions and workplaces than before, people must focus on the “process of work” itself. We will emphasize that workers’ control over this process is the basic condition for worker health and the starting point of democracy. We will continue the fight to organize the experience and knowledge of workers in the field as counter-knowledge. We will transcend this social system that threatens the dignity, lives, and equality of working people, and together with other social movements, we will build an alternative way of life and labor.

We will fully advance a workers’ health rights movement that challenges gendered labor and society. We will launch a movement that confronts the climate and ecological crises through the physical and mental health of workers. We will continue the fight to expand workers’ rights over working hours and workplaces, waged over the past 20 years, into a struggle to realize equality for all working people.

We believe that the spirit of our founding declaration from 20 years ago remains valid: “We will relentlessly struggle until all workers can secure healthy working conditions and gain control over their workplaces, becoming the true masters of their labor.” We will transform the 20-year journey to secure working conditions where all workers can work healthily, into a journey we will make together with you.