Samsung Electronics was embroiled in controversy about unfair labor practice in one of its maintenance service centers, according to a local media outlet.
According to the report by Media Today on Sunday, Samsung Electronics' service center located in Pyeongchon in Gyeonggi Province frequently forced its engineers to do overtime labor and do not give overtime pay.
The engineers were quoted as saying that the center forced its employees with low performance to take annual leave for three days without pay. As to a team with low job performance, the entire team members were blocked to work. They even forced its service engineers to report their call history with clients, which may invade privacy of clients, on the ground of managing their job performance.
Samsung Electronics service center in Pyeongchon city is known for high job performance. The criteria to assess job performance includes how fast engineers deal with their clients and how kind they are to them.
The labor union of Samsung Electronics service centers said, "The criteria to assess how kind the engineers is arbitrary, and it is difficult to view it as an objective standard."
"The high performance of the service center in Pyeongchon is an outcome of squeezing engineers by force to reach the goal," the labor union said.
During the process, the engineers were required to reveal their call history with clients. The service center reportedly asks their engineers to reveal detailed call history, which can invade privacy of clients.
Regarding the controversy, the service center denied the claim. They were quoted as saying, "We did not order such things. We haven't heard about it."
According to the survey done in 2013 by local lawmakers and a labor and environment research center, more than half of employees in Samsung Electronics service center are suffering from depression, which requires mental counseling. More than one third of its employees are suicidally depressed and the figure is more than twice of the average figure the public depression of 16 percent.
This is not the first time Samsung Electronics service center was embroiled in controversy over unfair labor practice.
According to a report by a local media outlet Hankyoreh in May, one union member of Samsung Electronics service center’s partners was brought to an island to dissuade him from giving up a member of the labor union.
The labor union member was quoted as saying, "After bringing me to the island, they told me to drop out of the union. If so, they will give me some shares for the new corporate entity."
Regarding this, Samsung Electronics' spokesperson said, "Samsung is not involved in any labor and management issue of its partner companies."