‘The Korean company E-Land is anti-union and immoral, therefore Hong Kong citizens should boycott it.’ denounced Kim Seok-Won, the President of New Core Workers’ Union at the 1 May rally in Hong Kong. (New Core is a group under the Korean retail company E-Land). Kim, together with ten other Koreans (including one journalist), flew all the way to Hong Kong to protest against E-Land’s attempt to get its mainland subsidiary listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Why did they do this?

E-Land is a Korean brand-name that most, if not all, Hong Kong people are unfamiliar with. Yet it is infamous in Korea on account of its inappropriate and deceitful business practices; it has been caught selling illegal liquor and unsold warehouse clothes as new ones. Apart from that and more importantly, in an attempt to cut down on labour costs, E-Land has ruthlessly taken advantage of a legal loophole in Korea by laying off thousands of irregular workers a short time before they were about to become full-time regular workers as legally obliged in 2006. This has sparkled off mass demonstrations in Korea, including a more than 300-day strike by E-Land workers and a country-wide boycott campaign against E-Land. Such anti-E-Land demonstrations have vastly shaken the company’s business. In Korea, E-Land has become extremely notorious and its credit rating has dropped to such a low level that most banks decline to offer loans to the company; it is believed that E-Land is on the point of going bankrupt. However, instead of resolving the growing labour dispute and talk with trade unions, it turned away from its country and tried to get money to fix its financial crisis by getting listed in the Hong Kong stock market.

 Transnational Workers’ Alliance Made Possible

‘Korean employers now have a greater inclination to employ irregular workers; this has made the work of trade unions, which are used to organizing regular workers, more difficult.’ said Han Ji-Won, an organizer from People’s Solidarity for Social Progress (PSSP) who has been highly involved in this struggle, on the first day I met him. Showing great determination and a strong will, Han further explained that ‘the E-Land workers’ struggle is of critical importance to us. This is not only a struggle for E-Land workers, but one for all Korean irregular workers. With this new experience in organizing irregular workers, the Korean trade union movement will turn over a new leaf. We must win for there is no other option.’ I was deeply moved by the strong resolution and willpower manifested by Han and other Korean friends.

I spent much time with these eleven Koreans during their eight-day journey in Hong Kong. Apart from my sympathy for the E-Land workers, another major reason for my devotion and commitment in the Stop E-Land’s IPO (i.e. Initial Public Offering) campaign in Hong Kong was the urge to make an unscrupulous transnational corporation socially responsible.

Having the same goal, the Koreans and their Hong Kong supporters had many meetings to discuss the strategies of our campaign. The very first thing we talked about in the meeting was, how we could turn our actions in Hong Kong into leverage over E-Land? To answer this question, we needed to have a clear idea as to how E-Land could get its subsidiary listed in Hong Kong, and to identify the key players in the listing process whom we should try to influence. While the company to be listed was a subsidiary, the IPO terms were loose enough that funds would certainly be going back to the embattled mother company E-Land in Korea. To list, in the first place E-Land had to obtain technical and administrative support from some International Purchasers and Public Offer Underwriters—UBS, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. Then it had to get approval in principle from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, granting the listing of the Offer Shares so that it could proceed with the Global Offering and IPO. However if such approval was to be withdrawn before the listing approval date or insufficient shares were to be sold in its global or public offerings, then E-Land would have huge difficulties in getting the company listed. In view of this, the key players apart from E-Land that we had to protest against, lobby or influence were UBS, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, international investors and the retail investors in Hong Kong. Apart from those key players, the Security and Future Commission (SFC), an independent statutory body, is responsible to provide protection for investors as well as to promote fairness and transparency of the securities and futures industry. Therefore, it was also one of the parties which we had to lobby. 

It was against this background and analysis that we took different actions on each of the eight days that the Korean workers spent in Hong Kong. On the first day, the President of New Core Workers’ Union, Kim Seok-Won, gave a speech at the 1 May rally organized by the HKCTU so as to make the immoral and unethical managerial practices of E-Land known to the public. We then held a press conference on the first day of E-Land’s IPO, which was on 2 May, urging the public through media to boycott E-Land. On 4 May, we had started to attract greater media attention as we held an assembly outside the Central Star Ferry Pier to reach out to the general public.

On 5 May, we protested against UBS, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, the International Purchasers and Public Offer Underwriters of E-Land. The Koreans even undertook a ‘three steps, one bow’ march from UBS’s office to Citigroup’s. (‘Three steps, one bow’ is a famous form of procession used by Korean farmers in Hong Kong during their protest against the WTO conference in 2005). These protests were to alert the three companies, the general public as well as prospective international investors, that E-Land in Korea was having serious trouble with its industrial relations, retailing business and financial stability, and thus that it possibly could not guarantee international and retail investors a good return in the future.

Also, based on some important information (such as details on its declining business and misconduct in Korea) being missed in E-Land’s IPO prospectus, we conducted a protest on the same day, urging the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to withdraw its approval in principle for the E-Land entity to offer global and public shares. We also had a meeting with the Security and Future Commission, a principal regulator of Hong Kong’s securities and futures markets, for the same purpose.

On 6 May, the day before the Koreans would return to Korea, we protested outside the E-Land subsidiary’s office at the address that was given in its IPO prospectus. However the office turned out to be empty and not even labeled as E-Land; we also found out that the given telephone number was wrong. We had clearly demonstrated to the media and the public that E-Land was deceitful and not trustworthy; it was literally raising funds through a shell company. At 11 a.m. on the same day, the Koreans escalated the intensity of their action by launching a 24-hour hunger strike outside the Hong Kong Stock Exchange’s office in Central. We kept telling passers-by about E-Land’s anti-union and customer-deceiving practices in Korea and urging them to boycott E-Land’s listing.

The 24-hour hunger strike might have made the Korean workers physically weak, but never dampened their determination to win this struggle. With the strongest steadfastness and resolution, they proclaimed at the end of the hunger strike and their campaign in Hong Kong that no matter what their actions on these eight days would lead to, they would carry on their struggle as well as the boycott against E-Land in Korea.

After the Korean friends went back home on 7 May, three inspiring items of news reached us. First, the Hong Kong newspaper reported that only 1 per cent of the E-Land subsidiary’s retail shares had been sold to the public, which meant the general public was not interested in its shares at all. Second, the greatest potential investor in Korea, a consortium of investors called Hwain Consortium, decided to withdraw its investment from E-Land. The decision is believed to be related to E-Land’s ongoing strike in Korea, as well as their protest in Hong Kong. Third, E-Land finally decided to shelve the plan of listing, which apparently was due to the considerable impact created by Korean workers’ struggles on the international and local investors —as well as the parent company’s poor financial condition and the pessimistic market. Supporters in Hong Kong were all highly excited and encouraged by this news. This has not only proven the success of our anti E-Land campaign in Hong Kong, but has also demonstrated the notable significance of a transnational workers’ alliance on the trade union movement in the era of globalization.

 Thoughts on Transnational Workers’ Alliance

Transnational corporations have been unscrupulously taking advantage of cross-border differences in labour standards, economic development, political circumstances, legal requirements and so forth, to make larger profits. However they have at the same time become increasingly socially irresponsible and less restrained in areas such as labour relationship and environment protection, by moving their business from one place of the world to the other when any obstacles in running their business arise. These fast-moving capitalists cannot be simply dealt with by the traditional trade union movement paradigm, in which the main focus is on one’s own country; on the contrary, a new paradigm addressing the changing development of capitalism is needed. Globalization has made workers around the world share the same fate and face the same enemy. The achievement of the anti-E-Land campaign in Hong Kong does not mean the total defeat of evil transnational corporations, but at least it has shed light on how international solidarity among workers is possible and how it might lead to a certain degree of control over transnational corporations.

We are still far away from the destination of total victory of workers but at least some steps forward have been taken. ‘We must win for there is no other option’— embodied in these few words is the spirit and faith that will make the workers’ struggle bear fruit.