Engaging the Media: Building Support for Minimum Wage Reform

Published as part of the New Tactics in Human Rights Tactical Notebook Series, this 16-page document describes the efforts of the Korean Women Workers Associations United (KWWAU) to engage the South Korean media to build public awareness about South Korea's minimum wage system. As detailed here, the goal of this advocacy campaign was to assist in the creation of a social movement to change the minimum wage law to afford greater protections for vulnerable workers, especially for women working from home and/or working as "subcontractors".

KWWAU shares the approaches they found were most helpful in engaging the media: credible documentation of the problem, petitions to demonstrate public interest in the issue, and visually engaging performances and demonstrations that were designed to be easily captured by the media. Author Jee Hyeon Kim says that, "[w]ith media interest, the campaign was able to expand, bring in new supporters, and provide leverage in negotiation and lobbying efforts."

Specifically, according to the author, even prior to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) crisis in 1997 KWWAU had been involved in organising female subcontract workers to advocate for their rights. For instance, KWWAU's Action Center for the Restoration of Irregular Women Workers Rights focuses on raising public awareness regarding the rights of women workers and the persistent violations of those rights. The centre also seeks to foster grassroots organising by connecting with non-traditional women workers through its counselling services, which have revealed to organisers what it was like to endure the poor working conditions that sub-contract cleaners labour under to earn a living wage. These initial findings led KWWAU and KWTU to conduct a nationwide survey in April 2001 on the working conditions of sub-contract cleaners. After the survey data was analysed, the KWWAU held a conference to publicise the survey results and build media interest in the issue. Organisers state that, "[w]ith our survey results in hand, we were able to use the conference to prove that our demands were reasonable and that South Korea's low income workers faced real challenges....Some government officials attending the conference were shocked to realize that 23% of respondents received less than the minimum wage. They promised to fix the minimum wage act."

After the conference, KWWAU launched a nationwide street campaign to raise the minimum wage in cooperation with other civil society groups. Activities were organised in 9 cities; they were featured in most Korean newspapers and broadcast on prime-time national television. Organisers credit the campaign's success to:

• catchy slogans - e.g., they chose "Can you live on 420,000 won (KRW) a month?" rather than "The minimum wage should be raised to a realistic level.")
• petitions that highlighted the public's concern - e.g., a magazine and some newspapers reported on the campaign and asked readers to participate in an online petition. (In one month, organisers gathered approximately 15,000 signatures, in part through an online board.)
• symbolic demonstrations that provided the media with "picture-ready" material highlighting the issue, the widespread distribution of materials about campaign events to the media, and shared documentation with the media to defend the campaign's perspective/positions.
• advocacy - "While we pressured the Minimum Wage Council [to demand an increase in the minimum wage], we also brought legal cases against businesses that paid less than the minimum wage, and pressured the Ministry of Labor to launch more investigations of businesses for violating the law, to which the Ministry agreed..."

Through this mix of tactics, KWWAU claims to have raised the minimum wage 12% in 2001.

In 2002, other organisations joined the KWWAU in calling for improvements in the minimum wage system. A "minimum wage network" was established, which brought the campaign to other regions - increasing the number of participating organisations from 3 to 50.

Here is an example of one of the network's actions:
"Yong-Hee Choi, a 57-year old minimum wage earner, working in a college in Incheon City as a cleaner. She...is the primary wage earner in her family....Due to the low wages she earned working at the college, she also took a second part-time job....At our performance, we showed her household accounting books....She could afford a meal costing 944 KRW (0.92 USD)....Yong-Hee’s average meal was less than 1/3 of a McDonald's hamburger. With this background, we staged a funny performance in front of the Korean Assembly. We prepared Yong-Hee's 944 KRW meal and shared it with the 60 participants at the performance....Our performance was so successful that it was reported in nearly all newspapers and broadcast on two major television news programs during prime time."

Impacts and conclusions are detailed in the report; here is one excerpt:
"Through our efforts, more sub-contract workers are unionized....Workers soon realized that increasing the minimum wage would have clear benefits for them, and they committed their time to the effort. In some colleges, they organized events such as gathering signatures for petition, holding street campaigns, and distributing brochures during their lunch breaks everyday for two months. Workers also began to view their participation as essential. Suddenly, they were no longer isolated in their lives as sub-contract workers. They were expressing solidarity with other workers. They were an important part of a movement."

In conclusion, the author stresses that, "[w]hile the issue of minimum wages may not be a priority in other countries, the tactic of engaging the media for public awareness is widely transferable to any society and issue where there is a semi-independent media." She notes that fostering a relationship with workers through grassroots organising was pivotal in creating a foundation of trust and generating involvement in campaigns. This trust was, according to the author, central in facilitating people affected by the minimum wage system to share their stories (which might have otherwise shamed them into silence) with the media. Along these lines, "[t]he stories coming out of the centers gave us a foundation from which to create a survey to document the extent to which abuses and limitations in the minimum wage system affected many sub-contract workers. Moreover, the reliability of our information was essential to building credibility with the media and ultimately with the public."

Finally, the author reflects that "[w]e had success because we convinced the public that the prevention of income disparities in our country was a legitimate social justice concern. It is important to offer convincing arguments backed up by reliable information. Through media involvement, the public came to agree with us that raising the minimum wage allows workers and their children to escape poverty."