Samsung chair imprisoned and 24 others found guilty in union-busting case

I'll bite. My father worked there from early 70s to late 90s.

Samsung dynasty is famous for being anti-union. That anti-union stance is deeply embedded in the company DNA. Union busting activities have been going on since day 1.

The Samsung founder once said, "Union over my dead body". Throughout its 50 year history, the company managed to operate without any official Union representation.

And if you spend time there long enough like my father, that DNA gets slowly worked into you, just like the current execs being tossed into jail.

A few years after my father left Samsung, he ended up as a chief exec at a pharma company for 10 years. For an older generation guy, he is extremely left-leaning and progressive. Except his disdain for unionizing. He would talk painfully about dealing with union leaders at company plant.

Some of that is probably attributable to his Samsung days.

This is a big message being sent to Samsung management culture from SK government who has turned blind eye to its union busting practice for 50 years.

Amazing, thanks for sharing. Can I ask why you think SK is putting such a prominent figure in jail over this?

I mean this in the sense that, first you guys are doing the right thing and second I think here in the US we have a terrible track record of making corporate leaders responsible for criminal activity. I'm really interested in what systematic differences exist between us that allow you guys to actually hold the powerful responsible for their crimes?

That's a great, but a complex question that I'm not qualified to answer. I'm sure others can chime in but here's my take: SK's democracy is still in its making. Even though the country is thousands of years old, its first 'democratically' elected president only came to power in 1948. That's after my parents were born.

I said 'democratically' in quote because nearly all presidents that came into power leading up to 1993 were essentially quasi-dictator and military heads. Even into the 1980s, South Korea had a hard core labor camp in middle of Seoul that housed tens of thousands of gang, anti-government or social activists, and criminals who were sent there without due process. No reliable death count exists, but it's estimated to be 500+ if you count people that suffered premature death after release.

So if you are 40+ like me, you remember what it was like to live in South Korea before the good times that we're all familiar with now. You remember your college age neighbors going out on street in 1980s participating in anti-government protest throwing Molotov cocktails. You remember anti-North Korea curriculum in grade school published by ministry of education. You remember not having true freedom of press and had to self-censor even until 1990s. You remember the sacrifices people made before voting in their first true true democratically elected president in 1993.

People are empowered to make changes, because they know they can. They've sent nearly all presidents elected since 1980s to jail for corruption. It's almost a running joke that if you become SK president, your next stop after office is behind bars.

9th term - assassinated in 1979

10th term - coup and forced out

11th & 12th - jailed and sentenced to death but commuted

13th - jailed and sentenced to death but commuted

14th - family member jailed.

15th - sentenced to death by 11th pres, but commuted.

16th - jumped from mountain and killed himself.

17th - jailed and released.

18th - jailed and still in prison.

19th - still serving.

There are millions of Koreans who still remember their 1st president including my parents.

Also, living right next to China and below warmongering NK, people subconsciously know that everything can turn on a dime; you don't want to take any chance with an incompetent one at the top helm.

I think this explains the psyche and behavioral aspect of South Koreans.

The decision to jail the Samsung execs is probably just as complicated too so I won't do justice to the topic. The current administration is very socially progressive. They've been trying to tackle increasing wealth gap issues through real estate tax rules reform, minimum wage increase, and enacting more labor protection laws. As much as Korea appears wealthy from outside, loots are not being shared fairly, people are losing hope, it went from saver nation to zero-saving nation in 20 years.

This corporate crack down is an extension of that. People are pissed and they want to see blood and government is obliging.

Someone once said, Korea still has a dictator and it's the people.

Again, this is just my personal view. ;-)

I'm a guessing American, but the rightism of modern Korean history is more accute than in the US. (Imagine if we were poor in the 1950s with some McCarther then Goldwater dictators.) Democracy is newer (not historical strong but good trend), and Samsung is more iconic a foe; imagine if FAANG and IBM were all rolled together.

US has tons of inertia both due to it's size and silly governmental structure. Local governments can't or don't do very much interesting in US, but they punch beyond their weight on blocking interesting federal stuff. You can think of foreign adverturism and military bloat as in part an outlet for all the political energy and ambition that should have gone into worthwhile things.

Koreans make cheap nuclear power plants, remember. When the political will lines up, shit can happen. Moon knows the history and so do the people, and those on his side our very self-aware in this being an overdue course correction. Tons of news led up to this, and should lead past this.

This is definitely not the first prominent figure to be nailed for corruption of late--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Park_Geun-hye

From what I've read in the international news the past few years, it seems there's significant political support and, crucially, momentum behind scrutinizing chaebol-related corruption.

The reason South Korea is putting the prominent figure in jail is more a political persecution than union busting. Union busting activity could have been resolved without a jail term.

In Korea the current administration came to power by those powerful unions, so it has to act against Samsung family as they were very close to previous administration. This is one of the avenue to punish them.

If you have any first hand experience dealing with union in South Korea, you will understand why multi-national companies are reluctant to operate, provide services and open manufacturing in that country.

For economy to grow and keeping in welfare of the employees there has to be a balance between corporate and unions. If an employees decides to go on a strike, company cannot fire them, cannot use temporary staff, cannot ask subsidiary or other departments to help, cannot outsource work done by that person to outside company, cannot close that division. If it does any of this its a criminal offense and the person including the CEO can be jailed. The only way to negotiate is to deal with primary union representative carrying industrial action and these union are current government affiliated and their leaders wields political powers. They will come with 145-152 demands to sign an agreement between union and company. But before coming with demands they will make the employees to go on strike to have a better bargaining power (they call it industrial action).

If company do not negotiate in good faith which is determined by the union representatives not by reasonable laws, the company will be punished. If company do not agree to demands the only way out is to close the legal entity. So most multi-national companies try to limit their exposure to those unions and that's the reason they don't invest as much. Most of the Korean economy is driven by local 5-6 billionaire families who themselves wield a lot of political power so can negotiate strongly with those unions.

Funny enough Korea is more socialist than China when it comes to labor reforms and unions. Also in Korea unions wield strong political powers.

In China there is only one union, which is toothless and do not allow strikes to happen. They also have to abide by company laws and rules. Its only labor courts and department which determine whether company laws in handbook are reasonable or not and every employee at least need to comply with the company handbook.

[It got long. I just thought I'd share an experience]

I worked in the company for sometime. Was visiting from their subsidiary in my country for some time. There was a young lady just outside the mobility HQ main gate camped every day speaking something on the loudspeaker. I didn't understand anything except that she was speaking in a very passionate voice and it seemed a bit broken too, a little pleading. No one would go near her or talk to her or take her pamphlets. Not the employees, not a TV crew, nor reporters and she was there everyday till afternoon from morning. I also noticed some photos there, among which some were in a factory worker's uniform (jacket, head protection etc). Though I could guess but I wasn't sure.

One day I walked up to her. She thanked me and told me in her broken English that her husband had died in a factory accident and the company was not owning it. What I understood was "they are not even talking to me". She had all the pamphlets in Korean, only one piece of paper in English which she gave to me and I was going through it. It would have been 1-2 minutes max and three guards basically swooped down upon me and pretty much pulled me aside while shouting at me that what I was doing was illegal and that couldn't talk to her in their broken English. They took the photo of my ID Card and told me "this is warning" and left me alone right there. By the day end I had received a call from my manager who asked me to refrain from getting into it. It was lunch break so when I went back to my office people were looking at my suspiciously. I was just out of college. It was a scary experience.

When the guards were pulling me away the lady was the only person protesting and none of other employees pretty much even looked at me. When I asked a Korean colleague in office that afternoon why everybody is looking at me like this and why no one talking to me suddenly he didn't say anything and remained silent and then softly "we only talk work, no personal". I guess people get conditioned. Even I didn't talk to her again. But I used to nod and smile at her and she always used to smile back.

I left the company after few months. No, I wouldn't say that was the reason. It's strange but I just can't bring myself to buy a company product till today. If someone asks me for a gadget recommendation and I find something decent in their catalog I do recommend that but I personally have not been able to get one myself since then. This incident stayed with me and whenever I think of the company somehow that woman's image flashes in front of me.

The department I work at needs to interference with a third-party very frequently and they are Union run. They are the source of much of our pain and frustrations.

There are bad companies and there are bad unions.

That being said, all a union is is workers collectively organizing to resolve the power imbalance vs. their employer.

Which company was it, Samsung?

I'm curious how a country with such a deep history of authoritarianism and right wing politics ended up with such draconian labour laws. Are they a recent thing?

How are those labor laws ‘draconian’? Seems like your typical Western worker’s rights.

When workers strike in the US the company can simply hire replacement workers. If the company does so the striking workers are not guaranteed their jobs back after the strike.

This doesn't seem possible in SK.

That's fair comment, I suppose it's a matter of interpretation. I have no idea how accurate the description given is and I'm not intending to critique it, I'm just interested in the history.

So the Korean law provides more protection for workers. How is that draconian?

This is a great, informed take. Thank you for the rich context!

> That being said, all a union is is workers collectively organizing to resolve the power imbalance vs. their employer.

This seems as reductive as saying all democratic governments are citizens collectively organizing.

I wonder how much of this is korean culture and how much of it is samsung. A friend of mine interned at waymo and took a full time offer. I had lunch with her, and I said another friend of mine at Waymo is getting bored, and she hushed me and said I shouldn't say that because it's bad to talk about your employer this way. Keep in mind my friend is still finishing school, and we were 1000s of miles away from Waymo office. ‾\_(ツ)_/‾

It’s not worker which is protected but the union which wields power and union leadership involved in negotiations.

Normally there should be a rule of law which balance the rights of company and worker and has to be reasonable. You turn it other way and it takes away the incentive for entrepreneurs to invest. If they are seen as criminals just if they do not agree with the provisions, they can show dissent only by closing business.

So the said worker whom this union is suppose to save don’t get a job, as entrepreneur will not takes risk of being put in jail, just because he did not agree to unreasonable demand of union. Also there are many other locations in Asia for multi-nationals. So the overall job market suffer if there isn’t a balance between company and worker demands.

Also it’s not really protection of workers, because workers need to work according to unions agenda, which are governed by leadership in those unions. If I am not wrong in Korea there are 2 unions.

The US has very weak protections for workers across the board.

In addition to South Korea, Japan, Mexico, and Quebec outlaw strikebreaking. The practice is so rare in the EU that it is usually not even mentioned in labour law.