Corea, República de - Samsung investigated for union busting tactics

In February 2018 the Seoul Central District Prosecutor’s office raided Samsung premises to seize an external hard drive containing thousands of documents. Samsung was initially being investigated over bribery charges, but when it was discovered the documents on the hard drive also contained information about its union busting strategies, prosecutors decided to launch a full-scale investigation into them. Samsung had previously denied accusations of union busting dating back to 2013 and had successfully avoided investigation.
Despite the investigation, Samsung maintained its bad faith attitude to bargaining and to union members. It ignored requests to reinstate the union leaders unfairly dismissed in 2014 and would not engage in bargaining with unions. When the Samsung Welstory union, for example, proposed talks on wages and a collective agreement, the company handed negotiations over to the Korea Employers Federation (KEF). By May 2018 those talks were still in deadlock after 19 rounds of bargaining. Unions at other Samsung companies reported similar problems.
The police were also implicated. On 27 June 2018, prosecutors raided the intelligence office of the National Police Agency following allegations that an officer had been tipping Samsung off about labour union movements among its employees, having been bribed by Samsung.

By September 2018, prosecutors had indicted 16 current and former executives and employees of Samsung Group for their union busting scheme, describing it as an «organised crime». On 27 September prosecutors in Seoul said they had also charged Lee Sang-hoon, Samsung’s board chairman, with leading an operation to sabotage a newly formed union at Samsung’s customer-service unit in 2013 when he was chief financial officer.

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