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May 22. The general strike started on May 19

By Jeon Jong-hwi, staff reporter

A general strike by Samsung Electronics Service Worker’s Labor Union entered its 29th day on June 16.

Over 1,000 workers continued their round-the-clock protest that includes sleeping on plastic sheets in front of both the Samsung Group Head Office in the Secoho neighborhood of Seoul and the Samsung Electronics Headquarters in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province. They also issued an appeal for drinking water and wet wipes.

The workers‘ demands include an apology from Samsung for the suicide last month of Yeom Ho-seok, founding member and chair of the Yangsan Service center branch of the Samsung Electronics Service labor union, and guarantees on labor activities and a living wage. Yeom took his own life on May 17, leaving a note in which he wrote, “I cannot bear to see people sacrificing or suffering any longer, or to see the way the union members are struggling, so I will sacrifice myself.”

Samsung Electronics Service Worker’s Labor Union belongs to Korean Metal Workers‘ Union, which has recently been in confidential talks with Samsung over the demands. Park Jeong-mi, a spokesperson for the union’s Struggle for the Martyr Yeom Ho-seok Emergency Committee, says, “We cannot give specifics about who the negotiations are being conducted with, but I will say that it is a representative of the counterparty empowered to guarantee the signing of a collective wage agreement that would restore the reputation of the martyr Yeom Ho-seok and offer guarantees on a living wage and labor activities.”

Neither labor nor management is willing to speak openly, but sources report that a Samsung Electronics official serving as the company‘s representative is at the negotiating table. This would mean that although it is behind closed doors, Samsung Electronics, which has so far kept a distance from problems involving subcontractors it says has “no direct relation” to the company, is now sitting down for talks.

Hyundai Motor also has many indirectly employed workers who it will not meet for face-to-face talks. Since 2005, the year after the Ministry of Labor and Employment declared the presence of an illegal workforce of 8,000 in house subcontracted workers, Hyundai Motor has been engaging in special talks. There have since been a total of 36 rounds of these special talks, which resumed on Nov. 31, 2012. The number also includes an 18th round of working-level talks held on June 16. The talks include representatives of the company, the regular workers’ union, the subcontracting company, and the subcontractors‘ union, however, Hyundai is adamant that they are only discussions and not “negotiations.”

According to the Trade Union Act, collective bargaining negotiations are understood to take place between workers and their employers, and currently Hyundai Motor has neither conceded to being in negotiations nor responsibility as a subcontractor’s employer.

Workers for subcontractors of both Hyundai Motor and Samsung Service Center see the bigger companies as their true employers, the ones issuing orders and monitoring worker performance. Yet most find it impossible to actually sit down for talks with their real bosses, and even when such opportunities arise after great effort, they are bound to confidentiality. Labor observers say it is time corporations were stopped from using subcontracting to neglect their duties as employers to workers.

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