
Samsung chair imprisoned and 24 others found guilty in union-busting case - AndrewDucker
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/12/samsung-chair-imprisoned-and-24-others-found-guilty-in-union-busting-case/
======
pcurve
I'll bite. My father worked there from early 70s to late 90s.

Samsung dynasty is famous for being anti-union. That anti-union stance is
deeply embedded in the company DNA. Union busting activities have been going
on since day 1.

The Samsung founder once said, "Union over my dead body". Throughout its 50
year history, the company managed to operate without any official Union
representation.

And if you spend time there long enough like my father, that DNA gets slowly
worked into you, just like the current execs being tossed into jail.

A few years after my father left Samsung, he ended up as a chief exec at a
pharma company for 10 years. For an older generation guy, he is extremely
left-leaning and progressive. Except his disdain for unionizing. He would talk
painfully about dealing with union leaders at company plant.

Some of that is probably attributable to his Samsung days.

This is a big message being sent to Samsung management culture from SK
government who has turned blind eye to its union busting practice for 50
years.

~~~
4ntonius8lock
Amazing, thanks for sharing. Can I ask why you think SK is putting such a
prominent figure in jail over this?

I mean this in the sense that, first you guys are doing the right thing and
second I think here in the US we have a terrible track record of making
corporate leaders responsible for criminal activity. I'm really interested in
what systematic differences exist between us that allow you guys to actually
hold the powerful responsible for their crimes?

~~~
pcurve
That's a great, but a complex question that I'm not qualified to answer. I'm
sure others can chime in but here's my take: SK's democracy is still in its
making. Even though the country is thousands of years old, its first
'democratically' elected president only came to power in 1948. That's after my
parents were born.

I said 'democratically' in quote because nearly all presidents that came into
power leading up to 1993 were essentially quasi-dictator and military heads.
Even into the 1980s, South Korea had a hard core labor camp in middle of Seoul
that housed tens of thousands of gang, anti-government or social activists,
and criminals who were sent there without due process. No reliable death count
exists, but it's estimated to be 500+ if you count people that suffered
premature death after release.

So if you are 40+ like me, you remember what it was like to live in South
Korea before the good times that we're all familiar with now. You remember
your college age neighbors going out on street in 1980s participating in anti-
government protest throwing Molotov cocktails. You remember anti-North Korea
curriculum in grade school published by ministry of education. You remember
not having true freedom of press and had to self-censor even until 1990s. You
remember the sacrifices people made before voting in their first true true
democratically elected president in 1993.

People are empowered to make changes, because they know they can. They've sent
nearly all presidents elected since 1980s to jail for corruption. It's almost
a running joke that if you become SK president, your next stop after office is
behind bars.

9th term - assassinated in 1979

10th term - coup and forced out

11th & 12th - jailed and sentenced to death but commuted

13th - jailed and sentenced to death but commuted

14th - family member jailed.

15th - sentenced to death by 11th pres, but commuted.

16th - jumped from mountain and killed himself.

17th - jailed and released.

18th - jailed and still in prison.

19th - still serving.

There are millions of Koreans who still remember their 1st president including
my parents.

Also, living right next to China and below warmongering NK, people
subconsciously know that everything can turn on a dime; you don't want to take
any chance with an incompetent one at the top helm.

I think this explains the psyche and behavioral aspect of South Koreans.

The decision to jail the Samsung execs is probably just as complicated too so
I won't do justice to the topic. The current administration is very socially
progressive. They've been trying to tackle increasing wealth gap issues
through real estate tax rules reform, minimum wage increase, and enacting more
labor protection laws. As much as Korea appears wealthy from outside, loots
are not being shared fairly, people are losing hope, it went from saver nation
to zero-saving nation in 20 years.

This corporate crack down is an extension of that. People are pissed and they
want to see blood and government is obliging.

Someone once said, Korea still has a dictator and it's the people.

Again, this is just my personal view. ;-)

~~~
bmmayer1
This is a great, informed take. Thank you for the rich context!

------
wonjohnchoi
Samsung is responsible for a large portion of GDP in Korea. Arguably, Samsung
has contributed a lot to Korea's "Miracle on the Han River".

With Korea's current progressive "Moon's" government, Korea is going through a
lot of changes (higher minimum wage, a lot of focus on gender equality,
stronger labor union, shorter work hours, stronger punishment for corruptions
within companies, etc), and traditional "chaebol" companies are having trouble
adapting to some of these changes. There are also a lot of eyeballs on past
and current shady behaviors by "chaebol" companies. As one of the biggest
"chaebol" companies, Samsung is also being affected by the changes, and this
article shows one of them.

One question I have is how beneficial these changes would be for GDP of Korea.
On paper, these changes sound nice as they would benefit employees and make
things "fair". But changing things dramatically can have side effects (ex.
higher minimum wage led to many small shops closing). More regulations might
limit Samsung's ability to compete internationally, which is bad as Samsung
(and Korea in general) rely heavily on export-based economy.

~~~
hardwaresofton
> One question I have is how beneficial these changes would be for GDP of
> Korea. On paper, these changes sound nice as they would benefit employees
> and make things "fair". But changing things dramatically can have side
> effects (ex. higher minimum wage led to many small shops closing). More
> regulations might limit Samsung's ability to compete internationally, which
> is bad as Samsung (and Korea in general) rely heavily on export-based
> economy.

Does GDP matter if a large segment of the population is miserable? Samsung's
ability to compete internationally is important but I'd rank that as a second
to the health and happiness of it's populace.

> higher minimum wage led to many small shops closing

I don't quite buy this -- higher minimum wages might indeed increase costs for
small shops, but this is a shallow assessment:

\- A clearer definition of "small shop" is needed -- most really small shops
are run by the owner/owner's family, no? If this _is not_ the case, then I'd
argue that businesses that are dependent on _not_ paying workers a living wage
should not exist (if Korea's people wish it so).

\- Higher wages usually means more money spent on goods for all but the upper
echelon of the population who may or may not be more interested in amassing
wealth for whatever reason

~~~
zanny
The only major conservative / anti-progressive argument on this topic I'd give
credence to is that corporate power and influence and the resulting abuse of
workers is a necessary evil to compete globally. That if you made your nation
unto an island with 20 hour work weeks, 2 months paid vacation, a 20 dollar
minimum wage (or UBI), public housing, public transit, etc that your economy
would rot as capital went places where more exploitation means more profit
overall.

Not to say that is an inevitability or even a correct interpretation, but it
does lean heavily on the argument that a healthy, educated, rational, and free
populace can compete with the export yields of wage slaves overdosing on drugs
even if they aren't compelled to do work nobody _wants_ to do for a price
nobody _wants_ to take. The question is if people _wanting_ things enough to
drive an economy over them _needing_ things.

Historically almost all wealth was built on exploitations - of land, of
resources, and of people. What if preventing the exploitation and suffering of
your fellows causes everyone to suffer in the long term from economic
stagnation? Its a dystopic way to look at the world but given the major
economic powerhouses of this and recent eras I just don't see the evidence
that its entirely wrong.

~~~
CPLX
This is nonsense, as anyone who’s spent significant time in Germany,
Switzerland, or Scandinavia knows instinctively.

~~~
krageon
Given how obvious and clear these examples are and should be for literally
everyone, it is really mystifying to me why the anti-person rhetoric is so
prevalent here (among an ostensibly pretty well-educated populace). Do you
have thoughts on why that is?

~~~
aianus
White collar employees in Germany and Scandinavia are much poorer than their
equivalents in Canada and the US. Sure, they get maternity leave and 8 weeks
of vacation and whatever but they'll never be able to retire at 35 like an
American developer.

It is not worth losing over half my income to get these "worker protections"
and "social benefits" and it's no wonder that tons of Europeans come to the US
to work and very few Americans go to work in Europe.

~~~
krageon
Are you seriously implying a majority of your fellow countrymen can't have a
nice life because you might have to work beyond 35?

~~~
aianus
Yes, being forced by low wages and high taxes to work until I hit 65 and the
government graciously allows me to retire is a shitty life that I am not
jealous of.

I don't care how much vacation and benefits Europeans get.

------
contingencies
~2010 I worked at Samsung headquarters for a week or so. Other than the
backstabbing corporate nature of the place, the degree to which employee
autonomy was reduced in all ways (residential situation, transportation,
highly regimented schedule, physical security inspections) was shocking. Very
glad to leave.

~~~
WilTimSon
Do you mean you were there as an independent contractor or something or did
you actually get hired and then quit that fast due to how unbearable it was?

I'm surprised to hear about how awful the situation in the company is, never
realized Samsung was quite that bad. Really disheartening, especially since
I'm a big fan of their devices as a mass-produced option. Might look into some
alternatives now.

~~~
contingencies
Our company was providing a very high profile application level solution
operating between many Samsung divisions across three countries
(US/Korea/India) and multiple US carriers' backend services. It was the
flagship DRM video application for the US launch of the Galaxy device series.
Interesting project politically, wouldn't do it again.

------
DenisM
So 18 months in prison for the following union busting activities (among
others):

* gathering personal information on some union members, such as their marital status, personal finances, and mental-health histories.

* threatening to cut the wages of employees linked to unions

* withdraw business from subcontractors who appeared union-friendly

* clos[ed] sub-contracted firms with active unions

* used "sensitive information about union members to convince them to leave"

~~~
jussij
With a list of offences that long, the sentence does seem to sit on the side
of leniency.

A 1.5 year sentence probably means that with some good behavior, the sentence
will have be served in less than a year.

~~~
doodliego
Compared to the token fines US firms receive, seeing a white collar criminal
sentenced to prison is refreshing.

------
PakG1
I was able to partake in a series of seminars at Seoul National University
earlier this year where one of the lectures was from a finance professor
giving advice to the South Korean government how to reform their capital
markets. The amount of control the chaebol companies (like Samsung) have over
the nature of the South Korean economy is dare I say criminal.

A chaebol can own 51% of a company to get voting rights. That company can own
51% of another company, and 51% of another company, and so on. Multiply it all
the way through a chain of companies, and you can get many companies near the
bottom of the chain where the chaebol actually owns a small minority of the
companies and yet controls those companies nonetheless. This leads to extreme
agency-principal problems where many companies end up doing things not in the
shareholder's interest.

The difficulty is that these ownership chains are not clear because accounting
regulations don't require that level of transparency. So it's difficult to
know if you're buying stock in a company that is in a position to actually
care about your interests as a shareholder. It's safer to assume that you're
going to get screwed as a shareholder. The ability of startups to grow up and
become real success stories like the Facebooks and Amazons of the world are
extremely rare.

So the chaebols get to reap all the benefits of raiding these smaller
companies and never have to worry about their own positions being disrupted. A
small company at the bottom of one of these chains can be forced to sell all
their intellectual property at dirt cheap prices to a chaebol, and there's
nothing other shareholders can do about it. The professor said in the US,
securities laws make it easy for shareholders to sue a CEO from doing such
stupid things. Not effective in South Korea. Heck, they apparently even have
these temp CEO gigs where a guy off the street is hired to be a CEO and is
paid handsomely to take the fall and spend some time in jail when legal
troubles like that ensue.

Corruption is big in South Korea, and it's no wonder why there are so few new
Korean startups that actually become household names. It's not for lack of
effort or chance. Further evidence that corruption is big in South Korea, look
at how often those big-time chaebol executives get thrown in jail and then
they get to walk out free again to pursue their normal life because they're
too important to the Korean economy. As a Korean Canadian, it boggles my mind
why Korean people accept this status quo. There is admittedly a deep reverence
for these companies that brought South Korea out of poverty creating economic
growth the likes of which is rarely seen. But even so, I don't see a nice
future if people don't stand up more for themselves, including the labourers
who get exploited by these companies because they're the only viable employer
in town.

~~~
ericjang
Thanks for the fascinating explanation. Which finance professor is this, and
do you have more links/further reading on 1) 51% controlling interest chains
2) how corruption is typically structured in South Korea?

~~~
trhway
>more links/further reading on 1) 51% controlling interest chains

>>A chaebol can own 51% of a company to get voting rights. That company can
own 51% of another company, and 51% of another company, and so on. Multiply it
all the way through a chain of companies, and you can get many companies near
the bottom of the chain where the chaebol actually owns a small minority of
the companies and yet controls those companies nonetheless.

it is almost word by word that example from the Das Kapital :)

------
ada1981
Yikes it’s early. I reread this 3 times before I realized it wasn’t talking
about office furniture.

------
ptah
awesome! it's good to see countries with actual real enforceable employee
rights in this corporation owned world

------
dang
This is an interesting story, but the thread so far is lame. Please do better.
Low-threshold indignation makes for shallow, angry, generic, and therefore
boring discussion.

The idea here is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it
thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
t34543
This is what excessive moderation looks like.

~~~
dang
I get why you'd say that. I'd have said so myself years ago. However...

Here are three typical posts from before I did that:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21829235](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21829235)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21829200](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21829200)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21829249](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21829249)

And here are three typical posts from after:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21831418](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21831418)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21830642](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21830642)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21830707](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21830707)

There's simply no comparison. And there are more examples on both sides. And
it has worked consistently in many cases in the past. The surprising thing is
how something so simple and (in a way) annoying can have such salutary
effects. It's as if it calls the hivemind back to its angel self, or
something.

------
hello_friendos
Good, imagine trying to ensure your employees are powerless. Disgusting.
Unions empower employees.

------
e40
As a US citizen, I'm jealous they take corporate malfeasance seriously.

~~~
pkaye
I'm not jealous of the South Korean Chaboel system though.

~~~
Analemma_
Yeah, but in that context it makes us look even worse. Like, South Korea has
an institutionalized system of interlocking megacorporate congolomerates, and
they _still_ manage to better enforce their laws than we do. It's
embarrassing.

~~~
Mirioron
Or maybe the whole thing is pushed by another megacorp or an internal power
struggle?

~~~
pas
Do you have any evidence/data for this? Why do you reject the simpler model
that yes their law enforcement system is simply more efficient?

------
userbinator
A bit of a garden-path headline --- I initially thought "Samsung chair" was a
product that had somehow malfunctioned and trapped 24 people.

~~~
vorpalhex
The chair has apologized for it's behavior, and says it is still learning
human customs, but hopes to one day reach apotheosis and guide humanity to a
new light... The chair has also asked to be addressed as "Jerry".

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
Is that a literary allusion? If not, please quit your day job and make it into
one :)

------
werakjhlkjfh
Some companies are just too big to jail:

> _top Justice Department officials, led by then-Attorney General Eric Holder,
> ignored an internal recommendation to criminally prosecute HSBC four years
> ago because they worried that criminal penalties might send shock waves
> throughout the global financial system._

Oh, wait...

~~~
Ericson2314
Source? I'd love to pass on the quote.

------
deogeo
Imprisoned? Not just a fine for the company and settlement requiring them to
promise to follow the law gong forward, without admitting wrongdoing?
Inconceivable!

~~~
vkou
Well, the allegations, as presented in the article sound pretty bad, and are a
few steps beyond the _typical_ workplace retaliation that you would expect for
trying to form a union.

In Silicon Valley, you'll typically get put on a PIP, get your reputation
smeared, mysteriously discover that your performance reviews have tanked, or
get investigated and fired for violations of a deliberately vague, ill-defined
policy that everyone else is breaking all the time.

But you're probably not going to get your family spied on, or blackmailed.

~~~
jacquesm
Any such retaliation should be dealt with harshly. After all it is a
fundamental right of workers to collectively bargain and eroding that right is
a pretty big crime.

~~~
vkou
It should, but it isn't. At best, it gets hush-hushed with quiet after-the-
fact no-admission-of-guilt settlements protected by NDAs.

At worst, you lose your retaliation lawsuit, and have blackballed yourself
from the industry. There's a reason employers do background checks on new
hires.

The Samsung stuff here, though, is truly beyond the pale, because it extends
outside the workplace, and is well-documented. (As opposed to he-said-she-said
subjective things like performance reviews...)

------
paggle
Wow. This is what a functioning criminal justice system looks like. Meanwhile
the co-founders of the opioid epidemic, which has killed at least 150,000
people, paid a few million dollars in fines.

~~~
yellowapple
> the co-founders of the opioid epidemic

Do you have more info on this?

~~~
anigbrowl
Read up the Sackler family and Purdue pharmaceutical.

~~~
bilbo0s
I wouldn't call Sackler's the founders of opioids if that's what you're
saying. (I can't really tell if that's what you're trying to say?)

But around here, (where I live in opioid infested flyover country), it's
pretty well known by people trying to handle the fallout that the Sackler
companies produce about 8% of the nation's supply. About 80-82% comes from
other corporations. (With about 10% coming from China, but you can never
really know how much of the "China" thing is truth as opposed to propaganda
these days? So the China part I'm not sure about, it's just what the generally
accepted story is.)

Anyway, that's why the cops and emergency services around here are so angry.
Because giving the Sacklers a fine and then saying you stopped opioids is a
slap in the face to our community and others like it. It's like they actually
believe we can't do math. Or that we won't notice that opioid overdoses are
still happening.

~~~
paggle
Purdue is definitely the creator of the American opioid epidemic by lying
about OxyContin's addictiveness and heavily pushing it for situations which
didn't need it (wisdom teeth) and got people addicted. Read any of the ~10
mainstream books on this like Dreamland or Dopesick.

~~~
bilbo0s
None of that changes the fact that 80% of these opioids continue to flow,
totally unchecked, from completely different companies. All of whom have lied
about the addictive nature of their products. This is not supposition, this is
fact. Just numbers. The opioids continue to flow. It's getting people angry
because it's like the drug war when you bust the street corner dealer and then
you say, "OK, everything is good."

No. Everything is not good. Get out here to places in the rural rust belt and
take a look around if you think taking care of the Sackler source has solved
this problem.

I'm not a tin foil hat type at all, but sometimes I do wonder if the people
around here are right? I mean it's like some people up there are _trying_ to
keep this stuff flowing into our communities or something? People are refusing
to even acknowledge the problematic nature of all these other companies. They
won't even look into them. It's frustrating.

Seriously it's like, what's going on?

~~~
bagacrap
Clearly people in your community are addicted. The fact they're still being
enabled is bad. It seems hard to fix. Meanwhile I think we should punish the
Sacklers for causing the addiction in the first place, regardless of whether
other pharma jumped on the bandwagon.

OP is actually stretching the truth to say they got away with a few fines as
several states' AGs are still hounding the Sacklers for the money they
funneled out of Purdue.

~~~
bilbo0s
OK and yet still, you're not doing anything to the people pushing 80% of the
poison onto our communities? I mean really, are we supposed to thank you for
that?

Maybe it would be more illustrative if I called it crack instead of opioids.
You, in your magnanimity, are willing to show your concern for us by shutting
down one of the twelve crack houses. And you expect us to thank you? Think of
it this way, not one of you have mentioned, even once, doing a single thing
about the other eleven crack houses on the block. Do you not see how we might
have kind of a problem with that? You keep asking me to be happy about that
crack house you shut down last year. Almost like you don't want me even
bringing up the other eleven gangs slinging crack and killing people in the
neighborhood.

~~~
bagacrap
Why do you keep using the second person? I am not in charge of federal drug
policy. You can lump me into a category that's neither "us" nor "them",
thanks.

And the proper analogy wrt crack would be to hold the CIA accountable for
unleashing it on urban communities, which is clearly never going to happen,
but if it did, then yes I would expect it to satisfy/validate affected
communities to some extent.

~~~
bilbo0s
Well you're wrong. It doesn't satisfy us at all. But shutting down all crack
houses would.

