Winning Conditions of Precarious Workers' Struggles: A Reflection Based on Case Studies from South Korea

Abstract

Our study explores the causal conditions that produce successful outcomes in precarious workers' struggles, in terms of bargaining gains and organizational sustainability, by focusing on internal solidarity from regular workers, external solidarity from labour and civil society groups outside the workplace, and protest repertoires mobilized. Employing the fuzzy-set QCA methodology to examine 30 major cases of non-regular workers' struggles from 1998 to 2013 reveals that strong solidarity building, whether with regular workers that have a different employment status in the segmented workplace, or with labour and civil society groups outside the workplace, is the crucial causal condition for precarious workers to achieve desired outcomes from struggles. Moreover, when their struggles mobilize fewer struggle repertoires, they are likely to achieve the successful outcomes of bargaining and organizational gains.