hankyoreh

Gyeonggi Province

Seventeen workers at a Samsung SDI plant in Busan were admitted to the Korean Metal Workers’ Union on October 13 in “protest against the company’s unilateral reassignment of the workers to its affiliate,” the union said on October 14. It is rare for regular workers of Samsung to be admitted into a union all at once and in such a public way. Samsung is well known for not allowing its workers to unionize, and a series of previous attempts to establish unions have ended in failure. Last year, rank-and-file Samsung SDI workers protesting against the company’s demand that they retire voluntarily won accession to the KMWU as individuals, but they failed to form a union after preparatory meetings on unionization collapsed.

The 17 workers have collectively been employed at Samsung SDI for between 13 to 21 years at a division that produces small liquid crystal display panels for mobile phones. They began protesting after Samsung SDI established an affiliate called “Samsung Mobile Display” early last month and ordered that 1,080 workers be reassigned to the new affiliate.

Sohn Cheol-shik, who worked at Samsung SDI for 13 years, said, “I refused to sign a reassignment document because the working conditions were ambiguous, except for one item that said Samsung SDI’s personnel management system would be applied to the new affiliate. The number of workers who refused to sign the document fell from 120 to approximately 10 people as the company pressured us by removing our desks and not assigning any work for two weeks after isolating us in a small conference room.”

Samsung SDI said the company “pledged job security and the workers have no reason to feel their employment is in jeopardy because the new affiliate will be launched as a joint venture with Samsung Electronics in January next year.”

Some of the workers who refused to transfer to the new affiliate were reassigned to a Samsung SDI plant in the city of Cheonan this month.

Sohn and his colleagues, all of whom have rejected the transfer to the Cheonan plant, have asked the company to reassign them to another department at the Busan plant. Another worker, Jeong Yeon-ju, said, “I’m not in a situation in which I can move to Cheonan with my 80-something-year-old mother who has been ill for more than 10 years.”

On October 13, the day the company ordered them to move to the Cheonan plant, Sohn and his colleagues signed a document to become members of the KMWU. “In order to withstand the company’s unilateral decision, we agreed that there was no option but to form a union,” Sohn said.

The KMWU began reviewing a plan to allow the workers to form a union at Samsung SDI under its umbrella. Kwon Soon-man, the vice chairman of the KMWU, said, “This means that Samsung’s ‘no-union management’ policy has burst, given that more than 10 regular workers have signed the KMWU membership form. We will make a decision on that and the establishment of a company union soon.”

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]