Labor activity has surged in Los Angeles this year, with everyone from screenwriters to boba shop workers and school bus drivers racking up victories.
But it’s another story in Koreatown, where grocery store workers at the Hannam Chain supermarket have been locked in a year-long-plus battle with their powerful employer over unionization.
The supermarket’s owner, Kee Whan Ha, is one of Koreatown’s most politically-connected developers and civic leaders. Ha famously took up arms to defend the supermarket on Olympic Boulevard during the unrest of 1992.
Today he’s facing a coalition of employees — Korean and Latino immigrants who’ve overcome the language barriers among them to fight for better wages and workplace conditions that they say were particularly egregious during the pandemic.
“They don’t care about us,” Hannam cashier Sun Ki Sim said of the company, which includes six locations. “They only care about the money.”
If Sim and other workers could have it their way, the Hannam Koreatown location could become the first Korean grocery in the country to unionize.
But the workers’ dream of a union anytime soon looks to be dimming.
Pending a final…
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