Korea is so strongly influenced by Samsung that it was called the Samsung Republic. Although the extent of such influence is less today, Samsung is still the most influential conglomerate in Korea. Companies controlled by the Samsung family are present in almost all industrial sectors, and Samsung’s power is so strong that it influenced the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of the Korean state. At one time, President Roh Moo-hyun even admitted that Samsung’s power is stronger than that of the government.
Samsung maintained a no-union strategy for 80 years. Whenever workers working at Samsung tried to form a labour union, the company made every attempt to destroy the union by kidnapping, surveillance, threats, or bribery.
In 2012, when the company’s labour-management strategy documents were exposed, it revealed how specifically Samsung prepared strategies to maintain the no-union strategy and destroy labour unions:
Collect conversations through shadowing and surveillance of all union members and potential union members.
Collect personal information that could influence union withdrawal, including relationships with acquaintances, personal corruption, trial progress, financial status (including debt), holiday activities with family, and health information for the individuals and their family. Daily reporting is conducted.
Disciplinary action and dismissal of ringleaders and active participants.
Use of blacklists to prevent re-employment.
Repeated prosecution and indictment.
Arrests through police investigation.
Delaying collective bargaining through the Korea Employers Federation (KEF).
Aggressive lockouts and inducement of closures of partner companies.
Targeted audits of workers active in union activities.
Coaxing and threatening “greening” (seceding from the union).
Neutralizing strikes.
The company I want to focus on, Samsung Electronics Service, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics. These workers were not employees of Samsung Electronics Service, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, but repair technicians working for the more than a hundred subcontracting companies that Samsung Electronics Service had unlawfully maintained.
They worked at 170 service centers across the country, wearing clothes with the Samsung Electronics logo, and repaired Samsung Electronics products. Starting from Galaxy phones, these workers repaired all products made by Samsung. Korean consumers have become very accustomed to the very fast and specialized repair service maintained by Samsung and LG, so if a repair is delayed even by a day, customers may get very angry. The Samsung Electronics Service workers had to endure the emotional labour resulting from that anger, and also faced pressure from the company. At that time, Samsung Electronics Service repair workers worked 15 hours a day, and it was very common to work 80 hours a week.
Uonionsing and Striking
In 2013, about a thousand Samsung Electronics Service repair technicians unionised. They were considering which union federation to join, and after hearing rumors that the Korean Metalworkers’ Union (KMWU) was tough and fought hard, they decided to join the KMWU. This Samsung Electronics Service repair technicians’ union was the first in Samsung’s 80-year history to have more than a thousand members. From the perspective of Korea’s democratic labour unions and the Korean labour movement, this union had to succeed.
In the early days of the labour union, several workers lost their lives. It shows how harsh Samsung’s workplace was. Shortly after establishing the union, a service technician who was working for 80 hours a week, died from a cerebral hemorrhage while on his way to work. At the end of October 2013, a 32-year-old worker CHOI Jong-beom took his own life. He left a will citing the Korean martyr JEON Tae-il, and explaining that his death was to resist the suppression against his union.
The labour union had to start the struggle immediately. Samsung’s refusal to negotiate prevented workers from legally securing the right to strike as guaranteed by Korea’s labour union law. As a result, they were unable to legally strike. They had to take an indirect approach and conduct the strike. Among the union members spread across about 50 service centers, the union leaders stopped working illegally and rested, coming to the Samsung Group headquarters in Gangnam, Seoul, where they camped out all winter to continue the struggle.
Consequently, they achieved a small victory against Samsung. Samsung promised that they would not suppress the labour union, they would provide work vehicles to the repair technicians, and they would also provide some bonuses to workers. But these were very minor results. In fact, these promises were not directly made by Samsung but by commitments made in negotiations by the Korea Employers Federation, a coalition of Korean capitalists, so it was not a direct negotiations with Samsung.
While making meticulous preparations, we went on a warning strike in February of the following year. The “warning strike” tactic, commonly used in the Korean labour movement, has two distinct characteristics. It serves as a tactical lever, demonstrating workers’ unity and readiness to fight against capital. It also serves as a rehearsal for a general strike, boosting workers’ solidarity. A warning strike can be used as a step-by-step, escalation tactic to gradually increase the level of struggle. This warning strike involved union members nationwide to test how committed workers were to striking, while we continuously educate workers, and persistently listen to their demands.
Through this process, a set of demands was formulated, and based on these demands, nationwide strikes took place simultaneously in multiple locations. At the same time, the union is concerned that most of the Samsung Electronics service repair workers were young labourers and were not familiar with the types of struggle methods traditionally used by the metalworkers’ union.
Deploying New Tactics
I thought that the warning strike should be done in a new way. In Seoul, the warning strike lasted for 4 days. On the first day, we created a dance to support the struggle. We learned the dance together, and designated the day as a rhythmic movement day to learn and dance together as part of the strike program.
The strike’s second day was designated as a movie day, and at that time, a film called “Another Promise” was released. This film is a fictional story that exposed the industrial accidents at Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor factory. We organised a program to go to the cinema together to watch this movie. Press conferences denouncing the exploitation at Samsung Electronics factories were held nationwide simultaneously.
On the third day, we collectively paid tribute to a co-worker who had lost his life a few months ago and vowed that we would keep the co-worker’s promise, pledging to win the strike. By conducting this strike, we believe that we all can strike together and have the will to strike simultaneously nationwide.
I would like to highlight the preparation process needed for organising the strike. First, we continuously educate union members on a daily basis and hold regular discussions. We talk about what our demands should be and what complaints exist in the workplace right now. Then, we gather these complaints and discuss together why we have to fight.
This continued for several months. We maintained a weekly union newsletter. Each week, we produced one newsletter, reporting on discussions with the management and the company. We shared the situation with workers: how the negotiations are progressing, and how some centers are fighting over certain issues, since this workplace is spread all over the country in more than 50 locations. When the negotiations completely broke down, we intended to go through union membership votes to secure legal strike rights. Under Korea’s labour union law, if labour-management negotiations break down, the union must hold a vote among its members on whether to strike. If the majority of votes in favor win, the union gains the legal right to strike.
Only by doing this can workers who have never experienced a strike have the will to strike and not come to work. At the same time, we didn’t just gather support within the company but continuously ran campaigns socially.
We were able to meet ordinary people in the every Samsung Electronics Service centers and share our concerns and an update on our situation, and also went to the square to inform the citizens about our issues. We thought that by gaining public support through such campaigns, they could exert pressure on Samsung throughout society. Our existing narrative strategy relied on the narrative that poor workers were suffering due to Samsung’s anti-union policy, and that only by changing this could Korean society change. Therefore, we had to appeal to citizens to join this movement.
In doing so, we gradually raised the level of struggle, picketing inside the service centers, holding placards, staging silent protests, and using tactics to increase the intensity of the struggle. Striking was not just about stopping work; through this process, workers showed our unity to the management and to society. It was a process in which the workers themselves could recognise the purpose of the struggle.
Union Suppression
As we moved into March, we had developed schedules for simultaneous nationwide protests. Samsung’s headquarters is located in Suwon, South Korea. Suwon is a city near Seoul with a population of about one million and hosts many Samsung factories and the headquarters building. In front of the headquarters, over a thousand people gathered for a strong rally, and for the first time, in this city where about 100,000 Samsung workers are employed, they held a street march and rally, raising the intensity of their struggle.
Because of this, Samsung closed down the three service centers with the highest organisational power. By closing these places, more than a hundred workers lost their jobs overnight. These workers, though surprised by the sudden loss of employment, organised a delegation to the struggle. They went to Seoul in two teams of 50 people each, spending a week at a time, gathering 50 people to sleep at the KMWU’s meeting room and seizing opportunities to agitate across Seoul.
They staged surprise protests at art galleries, held surprise protests at professional baseball games operated by Samsung, protested throughout the city, went to university campuses funded by Samsung to protest, used a range of methods to demonstrate, and frequently demonstrated at stores selling Samsung Galaxy smartphones.
Samsung was formed to consider reinstating the dismissed 100 workers, if only to prevent them from freely moving about and campaigning. Furthermore, the three service centers where these workers worked (Haeundae in Busan, Asan in South Chungcheong Province, and Icheon in Gyeonggi Province) were all located in major city centers, making a complete closure impossible. It was clear that these closures and layoffs were intended to suppress the union, and for this reason, the union spared no effort in supporting the dismissed workers.
Meanwhile, the suppression continued to worsen. On May 16, YEOM Ho-seok, one of union leaders, took his own life, leaving a note describing the hardship of life and the pain of union repression. His death reflected the harsh and devastating reality produced by Samsung’s corporate culture.After his death, we immediately brought his body to Seoul Medical Center and set up a mourning altar in the funeral hall. There, members began to discuss how to continue their struggle.
But on the evening of May 17, around 6 p.m., the police suddenly stormed the funeral hall and seized the body by force. It was unthinkable and shocking. It was hard to believe such a thing could happen again in Korea.
Staging Nationwide Strike
Next day, we declared an indefinite general strike and ordered all members to gather in Seoul. We had to start the general strike even though we had not been fully prepared yet.
A thousand workers stopped work and headed to Seoul. From Monday to Saturday, they spent their days in continuous protests, holding an outdoor sit-in and sleeping on the streets in front of Samsung Group’s headquarters.
Most of the one thousand workers did not live in Seoul — they came from southern cities such as Busan, Changwon, and Asan. For 50 days, they didn’t go home, sleeping in sleeping bags on the streets right in front of Samsung Group’s headquarters in Gangnam. When it rained, they slept under a bridge by the Han River. On Sundays, they played baduk (Go), futsal, or flew kites together.
Maintaining the strike was very important. If the same struggle continued with the same slogans, the workers might find it boring or lose morale. Therefore, we always thought about how to keep this struggle inspiring for the workers. We tried to deploy different tactics every day during the 50 days. Rather than holding the same rallies, we went to different places daily, including in front of the Chinese Embassy. We went to the Chinese Embassy because President Xi Jinping was coming to South Korea to meet Samsung Group Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong, so we protested in front of him.
Workers created podcasts to broadcast every week. On June 4th, 2014, the voting day for simultaneous local elections across the country, journalists came to the polling station where union members wore vests and voted together. We held a dance party at Marronnier Park to inform citizens that these workers are continuing their struggle.
We gained social support with press conferences, meeting university students, and workers writing personal letters to about 200 prominent figures in society. We put a lot of thought into ensuring that workers themselves recognise the story behind our struggle and can take pride in having a unique story.
This struggle came to an end after about 50 days.
Aftermath
The struggle reverberates. When a union was formed at Samsung Electronics Service, sales workers from Samsung Electronics tried to form a union, and LG Electronics Repair Workers’ Union workers also tried to form a union. A labour union was formed at a subscription-based home appliance rental service company run by LG Electronics, most of the workers there are women. When Samsung announced in 2018 that it would end its no-union policy, labour unions affiliated with Samsung Group were formed everywhere. Workers at Samsung Electronics’ big plants unionised, and tens of thousands of workers joined.
The early strikes of the Samsung Electronics Service Union eventually led to the signing of a collective bargaining agreement. By 2018, the union had also won a promise from Samsung Group to grant regular employment status and officially recognise the union. Since then, more and more labour unions have been formed within Samsung. The company’s long-held “no-union myth” has finally come to an end.
A few years later, miraculously, documents related to Samsung’s destruction of the labour union were discovered. These documents, amounting to about 7,000 pages, were accidentally found. Because of these documents, seven people including the president of Samsung Electronics Service and police officers were arrested. Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong promised to acknowledge the Samsung Electronics Service union and make workers permanent employees.
Reflection
I believe that just one strike cannot change everything.
On the surface, it ended as a tremendous victory. But there were many wounds. Two workers took their own lives. There were many differences and conflicts. Despite very frequent education and discussions for the members, there were many differences among workers. There was a very big difference in the thinking of a worker who repairs cell phones and that of a worker who repairs washing machines. It seems clear that overcoming these differences was a very difficult challenge. A few years later, the collective agreement was won, but it was very weak.
During the negotiation process with the employer union federation, the Federation of Korean Industries, represented by Samsung, we had to make a judgment on a negotiation proposal presented by Samsung, but when making this judgment, a senior union leader with extensive experience conducted the negotiation in secret, accepting the proposal and ending the negotiation. It was not a retreat made with the consent of the workers from below, but rather, by a secret negotiation. Not all union members agreed with the outcome of the negotiation. I believe that truly overcoming these conflicts through the struggle and moving towards strengthening unity is the real path to victory, and in this regard, there were certainly shortcomings.
There is a saying that it is more important how you retreat in an orderly manner than how you advance. This was a matter for us to ponder: how to retreat well and in an orderly way. I believe retreat tactics are just as important as advances in a workers’ strike because ultimately, our struggle must move toward greater unity and organization. Furthermore, all union negotiations must be based on the broad understanding and agreement of union members. Only then can we unite in both rejection and support of the agreement. Even if negotiations break down or drag on, workers’ unity allows them to continue the struggle.
This taught me a painful lesson, and I believe most workers will share the same sentiment. As the strike dragged on, many workers struggled to make a living while continuing the strike. And in the process of forging this difficult agreement, I realized that education and discussion, fostering democracy and consensus from below, were more important than the charisma of a leader.
Although the small victory of the Samsung Electronics Service workers was marred by trauma, the fact that it created this domino effect holds historical significance. In any labour struggle, there is no complete victory or defeat. Whether it becomes a victory or a defeat depends on how we remember and continue that struggle.
