Arbitration committee for Samsung’s leukemia outbreak proposes final mediation plan

Posted on : 2018-11-04 13:31 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
Committee widens scope of compensation while lowering bar for individual reparations
Demonstrators hold up photographs of Hwang Yu-mi
Demonstrators hold up photographs of Hwang Yu-mi

After the arbitration committee set up to resolve issues related to the outbreak of leukemia and other diseases at Samsung Electronics semiconductor factories and other facilities (the committee is chaired by former Supreme Court justice Kim Ji-hyeong) proposed a mediation plan on Nov. 1, the Samsung leukemia controversy, which has now dragged on for 11 years, will soon be wrapped up.

The arbitration committee selected everyone who worked for at least one year on Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor and liquid-crystal display (LCD) production lines since the first line was completed at the company’s Giheung factory in May 1984 as being eligible for assistance and compensation. While bearing in mind the difficulty of proving or disproving the causal relationship between diseases and the semiconductor and LCD work environment, this plan prioritizes the need to provide relief to the victims.

Under such circumstances, the arbitration committee reduced the amount of individual compensation while greatly broadening the scope of compensation in order to include the greatest number of people who might have been harmed by their work environment. The principle announced by the arbitration committee is recognizing as many victims as possible while setting compensation below the standard compensation for industrial accidents. In other words, this means that eligibility will be granted even when the causal relationship between work and medical condition is suspected, but not definite.

This reflects the practical difficulty of estimating the exact number of victims, who appear to number at least in the hundreds. “Thus far, we’ve received tips about several hundred individuals. We’ll have to wait and see whether the number goes any higher,” an activist with Banollim, a watchdog group for semiconductor workers’ health and human rights, told the Hankyoreh.

Along with its decision, the arbitration committee made a number of suggestions to the two parties, Samsung Electronics and Banollimm, an advocacy group representing some families of Samsung Electronics employees who died from alleged work related illnesses including leukemia. It recommended that they make a joint statement about workers’ health and human rights and that they look into various ways to deal with problems related to occupational diseases while continuing research and building their capabilities in regard to occupational disease. The arbitration committee also urged Samsung Electronics to “regard this example as a paradigm for the question of compensating workers at other workplaces where similar issues are raised as a part of its corporate social responsibility.”

Final mediation plans excludes workers employed by subcontractors

The arbitration committee also offered the following recommendations for South Korean government and society: “It is necessary to reflect soberly upon the current legal system, which makes workers entirely responsible for demonstrating causality in industrial accidents; to revise and improve legislation accordingly; and to contemplate with a critical frame of mind how dedicated we have been to interpreting the laws so as to actively guarantee workers’ right to health even under the current legal system.”

The limitation of this mediation plan, however, is that the issue of industrial accidents in semiconductors and related industries has clearly not been entirely resolved. “The workers employed by subcontractors who are rotated through a large number of semiconductor factories and other workplaces could not be included [in this mediation plan],” the arbitration committee pointed out.

“It’s extremely fortunate and satisfying that the mediation agreement that once looked so unlikely has been reached and that the final mediation decision was made, but moving forward, I think we still have a long way to go before we reach a fundamental solution to this issue,” said Kim Ji-hyeong, the committee’s chair. Though the final mediation plan has been announced, there are still related problems that need to be solved.

By Park Ki-yong, staff reporter

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

button that move to original korean article (클릭시 원문으로 이동하는 버튼)

Related stories