Oslo University professor of Korean studies, Vladimir Tikhonov, describes Samsung as one of the most difficult companies to unionise and strike against. Lee Byung-chul, who founded the company as a grocery store in 1938, was believed to have once said that Samsung would not allow unions until he had ‘dirt cover his eyes’. The company has a history of arm-twisting the government to side with it. In fact, three South Korean presidents — Chun Doo Hwan, Park Geun Hye, and Lee Myung Bak — were arrested for accepting bribes from the company, which escaped action due to its influence. It took these arrests, the deaths of several workers, and strong judicial interventions, for the company to formally recognise a union in the country. This was in the year 2021, 83 years after the company was first formed, and 37 years after its founder literally had “dirt over his eyes”.
Samsung’s history and legacy is closely tied to that of South Korea. But even in India, where citizens have a fundamental right to form trade unions, the company has tried the same tactics. As workers in Samsung's Sriperumbudur plant near Chennai went on a strike on September 9, with the primary demand that the company recognise their union, Samsung suddenly claimed that they had reached a settlement with “representatives of the workmen” — except, the workers who signed this agreement with the management, were the minority of employees who decided not to join the strike. The manufacturing plant, which makes televisions, refrigerators, and washing machines employs about 1,700 people — and 1,500 of them have been striking.
And then there are other questions: Why did the Labour Department of the state government, which has approved hundreds of unions at various factories across Tamil Nadu, delay to register the Samsung India Thozhilalar Sangam, also known as the Samsung India Workers Union (SIWU)? Did the government try to tread cautiously as a lot of South Korean companies such as Hyundai, HL Mando, Doosan, and Lotte function out of the state?
At the time of writing this piece, the Tamil Nadu government and the CITU has announced that the workers had agreed to call off the strike. The workers’ petition against the Labour Department for not registering their union is coming up for hearing in the Madras High Court on October 17, and sources in the state government have confirmed that they will not oppose the formation of a union. Striking workers have confirmed to TNM that they will be back to work on October 17.
But even as the agreement has been signed and the strike is ending, Samsung’s statement about the same has an ominous tone: "We will not take action against workers who merely participated in the illegal strike. We are committed to work closely with our workers to make the Chennai factory a great place to work."
So will they be taking action against those who didn’t “merely participate” in the strike? What’s the union-busting company’s gameplan, in the long run?
Samsung’s intrinsic link to South Korea
Samsung was founded in 1938, and entered the electronics manufacturing industry in 1969. During the initial years of Samsung, anti-communist sentiments were increasing globally. The US had passed the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 following the end of World War 2, which restricted the activities and powers of labour unions. After Japanese forces withdrew from the country, Korea was divided into two. North Korea, backed by the Soviet Union and China, invaded South Korea, backed by the US. The Korean war led to the death of nearly thirty lakh people in three years.
Ravaged by war, South Korea had to find ways to revive its economy. The country’s per capita gross national product in 1954 was USD 78.7, which was less than African countries such as Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Congo.
By 1985, it increased to USD 2,032.
The route the country took to manage this was inspired by its coloniser Japan: they funded entrepreneurs and created Chaebols — wealthy cliques. They channelled the funds they received from the US to these Chaebols. The country, which largely depended on agriculture until the early 1960s, slowly shifted to a semi-industrial economy. The employment rate in agriculture dropped to 31.7% while manufacturing saw a rise from 4.6% in 1958 to 27.7% in 1982. If the Korean war devastated the country, the Vietnam war in its initial stages was the country’s gateway to prosperity.