The labor union strongly objected Samsung Electronics Service’s plan, saying that transferring the call center to another subsidiary will break the labor-management agreement.
Samsung Electronics Service announced in April that it will directly hire 8,000 employees directly from 90 partners. The company has hired 8,000 people with in-house subcontracting
When Samsung Electronics Service announced that it would include the call center staff as its subsidiary, the labor union strongly protested it as “Samsung’s national fraud”.
“As the company said it would exclude call center partners from the list of direct employment, practical consultation broke down on August 30th,” revealed the Samsung Electronics Service Metal workers Union on August 31st.
In April, Samsung Electronics Service was not restricted to the scope of its partners, and about 8,000 employees including call center employees were directly employed. Since then, labor and management have held 24 working-level meetings in four months.
Samsung Electronics Service Branch announced that the company should hire employees of its call center partners as agreed.
“The call center staff members, along with other staff, used the electronic system of Samsung Electronics Service and worked with one flow of work. There is no reason to be excluded from direct employment,” said Hwang Soo-jin, head of Samsung Electronics Service Association during an interview with ‘Hani’.
“(Samsung) is promoting direct employment agreements to lead public opinion in favor of the then Vice-chairman Lee Jae-young’s trial, and later cheating the people and the court. It is a national fraud,” said Samsung Electronics Service.
They are planning to ask the Ministry of Employment and Labor and the prosecution to investigate the situation, saying, “It is possible that the call center partner company is a camouflaged subsidiary of Samsung Group (a violation of the Fair-Trade Act) or that the call center business itself is illegally dispatched (a violation of the dispatch law). If the company does not withdraw its call center subscription plan by September 4th, the company will struggle with regional strikes.”
“In the case of the peer company, the call center was operated like a subsidiary, so we sent the labor union an opinion of the switchover to a subsidiary. Labor resistance is part of the negotiation process,” said Samsung Group’s Public Relations team in an interview with ‘Hani’.
In April, when Samsung Electronics Service announced its direct employment, the labor union was unanimously welcomed, and it was considered unconventional. On the other hand, some analyze that the pressure on the prosecution’s investigation on the labor union’s collapse and the prosecution’s investigation might have been part of the problem.
