{"title":"The Formalization of Informal Workers at Hyundai Motor Company","authors":"Minhyoung Kang","doi":"10.1177/00323292221078652","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Hyundai Motor Company (HMC) has departed from the general tendency in the neoliberal era toward labor casualization. Nonregular workers at HMC have succeeded in having their employment status converted from precarious to permanent. I investigate why informal workers at HMC have been more successful in regularizing their status than informal workers in the shipbuilding industry. I contend that the deskilled labor process in automobile production provides favorable conditions for informal workers to organize themselves and stage disruptive protests. These differences in the labor process, however, cannot fully explain the success of HMC given the failure in other automobile factories. I argue that self-organization and protests led by rank-and-file informal workers as well as solidarity from left-leaning formal workers played decisive roles in formalizing informal workers at HMC. I conclude by stressing the importance of structural conditions and workers’ collective actions in explaining the divergent outcomes in limiting dualization.","PeriodicalId":47847,"journal":{"name":"Politics & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.1000,"publicationDate":"2022-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Politics & Society","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00323292221078652","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"POLITICAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Hyundai Motor Company (HMC) has departed from the general tendency in the neoliberal era toward labor casualization. Nonregular workers at HMC have succeeded in having their employment status converted from precarious to permanent. I investigate why informal workers at HMC have been more successful in regularizing their status than informal workers in the shipbuilding industry. I contend that the deskilled labor process in automobile production provides favorable conditions for informal workers to organize themselves and stage disruptive protests. These differences in the labor process, however, cannot fully explain the success of HMC given the failure in other automobile factories. I argue that self-organization and protests led by rank-and-file informal workers as well as solidarity from left-leaning formal workers played decisive roles in formalizing informal workers at HMC. I conclude by stressing the importance of structural conditions and workers’ collective actions in explaining the divergent outcomes in limiting dualization.
期刊介绍:
Politics & Society is a peer-reviewed journal. All submitted papers are read by a rotating editorial board member. If a paper is deemed potentially publishable, it is sent to another board member, who, if agreeing that it is potentially publishable, sends it to a third board member. If and only if all three agree, the paper is sent to the entire editorial board for consideration at board meetings. The editorial board meets three times a year, and the board members who are present (usually between 9 and 14) make decisions through a deliberative process that also considers written reports from absent members. Unlike many journals which rely on 1–3 individual blind referee reports and a single editor with final say, the peers who decide whether to accept submitted work are thus the full editorial board of the journal, comprised of scholars from various disciplines, who discuss papers openly, with author names known, at meetings. Editors are required to disclose potential conflicts of interest when evaluating manuscripts and to recuse themselves from voting if such a potential exists.