Between the TV and the Barricade: Performativity and Militancy of Subway Strikes in New York City and Seoul

Youbin Kang, University of Wisconsin - Madison

This paper compares two significant public transit strikes in New York City in 2005 and Seoul in 1999 through a comparative analysis of the process of emergence of the two strikes. The 2005 New York Transit strike was largely performative, lasted three days, and without the backing of a highly organized rank-and-file, but was able to secure lasting reforms in transit worker contracts. On the other hand the militant, 11-day strike in Seoul in1999 was met with heavy- handed state repression. I argue that the symbolic act of leveraging controlling images (Collins 1990) was a significant contributor to this divergence, where racialized legitimation strategies were pivotal in the relative success of the New York City strike. Lacking legal and political stability due to labor-repressive contexts in both cities, both transit unions used charisma and worker solidarity developed through collective emotions, articulated in class terms to symbolically reify and legitimize the strike. However, the weaker economic punch of the New York strike was proven to be more effective because of a cause-specific articulation of racial dispossession which resonated among a wider range of political interests, compared to a broad- based articulation of class-conflict in Seoul. This finding invites further inquiry into the impact of leadership, race, and class on trade union organizations in labor-repressive contexts, and the impact of legitimization processes in collective movements.

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 Presented in Session 61. States, Politics, and Labor