Guitar Workers Protest Sweatshop Conditions; Rage Against The Machine, Wayne Kramer Support...

Guitar Workers Protest Sweatshop Conditions; Rage Against The Machine, Wayne Kramer Support...: "

The entire saddening press release, from Cort and Cor-tek Guitar Workers and the Korean Metal Workers Union (KMWU):

Cort Guitar workers travel from Korea to challenge Cort Guitars, Fender and

Ibanez at NAMM Show 2011 (Jan. 13— 15th)

Support from musicians Tom Morello, Zack de la Rocha, Ozomatli, Boots Riley

of The Coup, and Wayne Kramer builds awareness among music fans around the world

LOS ANGELES & ANAHEIM, California

The Cort and Cor-tek guitar workers of South Korea produced guitars at

Cort’s factories for famous brands such as Fender and Ibanez for decades,

but were abruptly fired in 2007 for forming a union to change their

sweatshop-like conditions. Both Korea’s National Labor Relations Commission

and the Seoul courts judged Cort’s mass dismissal and the sudden closure of

its Korean factories to be illegal. The Commission and the courts also found

the company’s claim of financial hardship to be false and fined the company.

However, despite these rulings, Cort has used intimidation and violence to

secure forced resignations from the workers to deny them unemployment

benefits and to retaliate against the union through hired thugs. The

workers’ case is now in Korea’s Supreme Court.

Last January 2010, the Cort guitar workers twice sent representatives to

meet with Fender, one of Cort’s main business partners. Although Fender

promised an independent and timely investigation, so far, it has continued

with business as usual and proceeded only with an internal, closed-door

investigation which is far from concluded. This January, the Cort workers

will again meet with Fender in Anaheim to demand more.

Cort Guitars has profited in the billions of dollars from making guitars for

the global market. But at NAMM, the guitar workers and supporters from all

walks of life will call on Cort, Fender and Ibanez to respect basic worker

rights and re-open Cort’s illegally shuttered factories.

Throughout 2010, musicians such as Tom Morello and Zack de la Rocha of Rage

Against the Machine, Boots Riley of the Coup, Wayne Kramer of MC5, and

Ozomatli have supported the Cort guitar worker campaign, both in the US and

abroad at venues such as the Fuji Rock Festival 2010.

The press conference will be held on the opening day of NAMM at 11 am on

Thursday 1/13 at Anaheim Convention Center, near the Palm Courts. Along with

a statement from Tom Morello, the Orange County Federation of Labor, UNITE

HERE, AFL-CIO United Steel Workers Local 675, other organizations will

express their support of the Cort and Cor-tek guitar workers’ demands.

As one Cortek worker recalled, “There was one worker who worked at the

painting process for 25 years and suffered from bronchitis. One day, when he

lost consciousness while working, the managing staff even demanded that he

write a letter of resignation during his hospitalization.” (For more worker

stories, see cortaction.wordpress.com/workers-stories.)

The conditions at Cort’s factories in Korea from sexual harassment to high

rates of industrial injury, all call for serious attention from Fender and

other American guitar companies that rely on Cort for production.

Overview of Cort and Cor-tek Issue

We are Cort and Cor-tek guitar manufacturing workers who treasure work and

music, and the artists, musicians and cultural workers who stand with them.

We want to reveal the hidden truth behind Korea’s representative

guitar-making firm and global guitar giant, Cort Guitars, and its acoustic

production arm, Cor-tek. We worked at the factories in Incheon and Daejon,

Korea, for decades, producing guitars for Fender, Ibanez, Cort, Parkwood and

others.

The workers at Cort and Cor-tek long endured poor working conditions,

earning pittance wages amounting to less than 24 dollars a day (at 10 years

seniority), forced overtime, and facing demeaning treatment on the job such

as sexual harassment and being unable to use the restroom as needed. With

the construction of a factory in China, the workers became highly concerned

about job security. Unable to endure the unsafe, degrading conditions and

job insecurity any longer, the Cor-tek workers formed a union on April 2,

2006. At the same time, they were also told the company was undergoing

financial hardship, and believing it, they put extra energy into their

shifts and saved materials carefully so as not to waste anything.

At dawn on April 9, 2007, without notice to the workers, Cor-tek posted an

announcement of temporary closure at the Daejon factory, chained the gates

shut and physically closed down the local union office by nailing in screws.

With the factory idle, the company paid nonunion workers their full wage and

bonus while paying only half of the wages to union members. The company

continued to pressure the union members to submit resignation papers while

reassuring the non-union workers that the factory would return to normal

production after the union was gone. On April 12, just 3 days later, Cort

claimed that the Cort workers in the Incheon factory were all redundant and

dismissed all of them. In July, Cor-tek then issued notice of permanent

factory closure of the Cor-tek plant, after it had secured resignation

papers under false premises.

The National Labor Relations Commission ruled that Cor-tek’s disciplinary

dismissal of the union officers was illegal, and that the mass redundancy

dismissal of all the Cort workers also did not fulfill legal prerequisites

and found those dismissals unfair and illegal as well (Oct. 2007, Mar.

2008). The Seoul Administrative Court also found that both Cort and Cor-tek

mass dismissals were illegal, finding that Cort’s claim of financial

hardship false since the company had posted profits amounting to 78 billion

for a decade straight until 2006, and since managerial and office staff

salaries even increased after the mass firing (Aug. 2009, Nov. 2009).

Cor-tek was also found to have violated the Equal Opportunity Act with its

discriminatory treatment of its women workers (July 2008), while Cort’s

dismissal of five workers who were industrial injury victims while on the

job was ruled by the courts in favor of the workers as well (February 2008).

The company, which claimed financial hardship as a reason for mass

dismissal, remains extremely profitable, raking in sales of $1.3 Billion

(Cort, 2007) and $5.1 Billion (Cor-tek, 2007), with a net profit of $14

Million dollars and $700 Million dollars respectively for 2007 alone, based

on operations in China and Indonesia. It commands 30% of the global guitar

market, and makes 95% of its sales abroad, with only 5% of its sales coming

from Korea.

This is not a case of a company in genuine difficulty. It is a clearcut

case where a highly profitable company moved its operations and lied to its

workers in order to avoid unions, to avoid basic worker protections like the

minimum wage, and instead turned to production in China and Indonesia

without any regard for the Korean workers who had been with the company for

decades. There is no doubt that the workers in China and Indonesia are

facing the same, if not worse, treatment, for the sake of maximum profit.

With nowhere else to go, the illegally fired workers have protested for over

1400 days by protecting and occupying the closed factories, by hunger

strike, by self-immolation, and by street rallies. In 2009, they protested

through a hunger strike on a high-wattage electricity tower at Seoul’s

riverside for 30 days. In 2010, they went to Fuji Rock Fest and addressed

thousands of fans during the performances of Zack de la Rocha and Ozomatli.

Musicians and artists in the US, in Seoul and at other music fairs, such as

Musikmesse in Frankfurt and Yokohama Music Fair, have held concerts,

exhibits, and creative actions to make the issue known to the public. In LA

and Anaheim as well, the Cort and Cor-tek workers will carry out a week of

actions. See the blog for more details. http://cortaction.wordpress.com.

Read and comment. From thedailyswarm.com."