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Send your solidarity to the Samsung workers!

In 1998, Samsung Life Insurance laid-off 1,723 workers - under the name of 'restructuring'. The workers have been threatened and deceived by the management, but nonetheless have struggled for the past three years for reinstatement and a union, and have campaigned consistently against the hereditary ownership and embezzlement of the Samsung Group. Samsung, a world-famous transnational company, is notorious for its non-union principle and oppression against the workers in and outside of Korea. Now, the workers face yet another round of lay-offs as Samsung recently promulgated its plans for 'constant restructuring'. We ask for your attention to the struggles of the Samsung workers, and your solidarity. - PICIS

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The law is never on the side of the oppressed!

by Struggle Committee for Reinstatement of Samsung Life Insurance Workers
URL : http://www.outsamsung.org / Email : outsamsung@hanmail.net

Unlawful lay-offs of Samsung Life Insurance

In 1998, Korea came under the attack of economic crisis and many companies implemented restructuring to effectively tackle their financial difficulties. Among the many methods of going about this process, lay-offs, a threat to the lives of the workers should be considered only as the last resort. However, there are some companies that manipulated the national crisis - one of them being 'Samsung'.
The Samsung Life Insurance within the Samsung Group, announced that they will have to implement 'voluntary retirement' as part of the restructuring process, to save the company from what it estimated would be 3.4 quadrillion won (approx. 2.7 trillion dollars) loss in profit. Isn't 'voluntary retirement' something that should b decided by the worker in question? But Samsung Life Insurance made an arbitrary list of workers to be laid-off and wrung out resignation letters.
In 1999, when Korea was in the midst of following SAPs enforced by the IMF, there were all sorts of media reports on gruesome stories, one of which was a personnel manager in charge of making the 'lists' was fired himself and committed suicide in guilt. But in Samsung, the personnel managers who forcefully jeopardized the livelihoods of 1,723 workers and their families got promotions and still sits at their desks, threatening us unto this day.
Just two months after the lay-offs in December of 1998, 1,000 workers from Samsung Motors - a complete business failure by the Samsung chairperson Lee Kun-Hee - were transferred to Life Insurance, and then Samsung employed new workers next January and 500 more part-time workers. In April, the financial statements gave the result of 96 trillion won profit. The stockholders must have rejoiced over the success of the cuts, while workers were shocked. Samsung Life Insurance did not implement restructuring out of necessity due to financial difficulties, but misused restructuring to save the crumbling Samsung Motors and to decrease labour costs through conversion to a part-time workforce. From the very beginning this was a fraud, a scenario of wrongful restructuring, and unlawful lay-offs by force and threat.
Most of the 1,723 workers laid-off were long term workers who had worked in Samsung for more than 10 years. And 1,200 were women. Samsung had boasted of overcoming gender discrimination, but we know that this a lie. Behind their fancy advertisements, women workers who had worked long-term, were married or in midst of maternal leave lost their jobs. Samsung was able to finish off their restructuring plans in less than a week, by using brutal methods and manipulation.

The Struggles of the Samsung workers

Immediately after the workers received their yellow slips during the winter months of 1998, individual workers protested against the company but in vain. Thus we came to organize ourselves. In May 1999, we demonstrated for the first time, in front of the Korean Chamber of Commerce, one block away from the Samsung Head Office. Workers started filing suits against the company all around the country, and in July, the laid-off workers augmented the Struggle Committee for Reinstatement of Samsung Life Insurance Workers to coordinate the struggles of angry workers all across the nation. As restructuring plans spread to other Samsung companies in the Group, the Struggle Committee of Laid-off Workers of Samsung Group was formed. Samsung prohibits and infringes any attempts of the workers to form a proper union.
The Struggle Committee launched a 'Stop-Samsung' Campaign, and our struggles continued into 2001. The company obviously turned their backs to us but nevertheless we continued despite arrests and imprisonment, shaving our heads, demonstrating in front of Lee Kun-Hee's house, and continuing our one-person relay demonstrations everyday throughout the cold winter, the downpours of the monsoon and the summer heat. Workers from the different Samsung companies have formed a strong solidarity, demonstrating together in front of Life Insurance, at the Suwon plant of Samsung electronics and against the Samsung SDI. Our Committee is now recognized as a member of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions.

Samsung retaliates

During our first demonstration in May 1999, the management of Samsung Life Insurance applied for their own 'demonstration' in front of the office building as to attempt to prevent the workers from gathering. The 'envoys' from Samsung obstructed the demonstration by force and threatened to confiscate the monthly insurance that the workers had put in.
Workers at Samsung SDI were threatened in a more direct way. Samsung SDI has a strange 'interview' system, where a boss takes the workers to hold 'interviews' and 'consultations' outside the plant. Some workers at Samsung SDI were attempting to form a union, to which Samsung literally dragged the workers around the whole country for weeks, threatening them to either give up the union or be fired. Some were seduced with sweet talk about sending them abroad or paying them off, while others were 'kidnapped' by thugs hired by the company.
The methods which Samsung adopted to block the workers' attempt to form a union got more sophisticated. When their 'interview' method failed to stample the workers' aspirations for a union, the management themselves applied for a union first. Samsung S1, a private security provider of Samsung Group, used the Korean law against the formation of multiple unions and formed a 'ghost union'. This has become the most favoured method adopted by the Samsung Group to maintain its non-union principle.

Thus we demand :
- the reinstatement of the workers fired from Samsung Life Insurance, and a sincere apology from the management!
- stop to the oppression against the workers yearning for a union!
- stop to the illegal hereditary management of Lee Kun-Hee!
- stop to the neo-liberal restructuring!

It has now been almost three years since we were thrown out, and yet the company still telephones and threatens sons, daughters, wives and husbands of the workers. Pornographic pictures are being posted onto our website board and texts filled with loathsome words. The workers who were unjustly laid-off or those yearning for a union are being suppressed. The law is never on our side, but we will continue to struggle for our rights. We call for your attention and your solidarity!