Hanjin workers gaining support

Building up towards the July 3 caravan, mass actions were made at the Korean Embassy and Hanjin National Office in Fort Bonifacio followed by a synchronized noise barrage at Welcome Rotonda in Quezon City

The protest caravan aims to call attention to several serious grievances starting with deaths in the shipyard, to protest and prevent maltreatment in the hands of their Korean superiors whom they accuse of yelling and inflicting physical harm, to protest lack of sanitation in the food served them in the cafeteria and the reinstatement of 40 illegally dismissed workers.

Bishop Broderick Pabillo, the chairman of the CBCP’s National Secretariat on Social Action will celebrate a mass after the July 3 caravan in Subic, Zambales. Other workers' groups, NGOs, and prominent figures are among the ardent supporters of Hanjin protesters.

Protesters, mostly workers and supporters of South Korean dockyard company Hanjin, picket the South Korean embassy in Taguig City Wednesday to protest alleged lack of safe and humane conditions and to call for self-organization of the South Korean-owned company. PHOTO/CAPTION FROM http://www.inquirer.net/

Meanwhile, the 190-day strike at Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction main shipyard in Korea ended Monday.

According to the company’s internal agreement to stabilize employment, the management cannot fire workers as long as its overseas plants are in operation. Hanjin shipyard in Subic has continued to build ships and received additional orders recently. They made profits of 430 billion won over the past decade.

WORKERS TUSSLE: Temporary workers, left, acted on a court order to remove striking Hanjin Heavy Industries & Construction workers from a vessel crane at the company’s Busan, Korea, shipyards Monday. The workers had been holding a sit-in against the company’s mass dismissal. (Lee Jae-Won/Reuters)