Samsung Union Leaders Investigated Over Alleged Employee Blacklist
Police refer head of Samsung Electronics' largest labor union and a senior official to prosecutors for allegedly stealing personal information of 100,000 employees.
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Police referred the head of Samsung Electronics' largest labor union and another official to prosecutors for allegedly stealing personal data of 100,000 employees to create a union blacklist.
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Why It Matters
Samsung Electronics filed police complaints in April alleging union officials improperly extracted employee data.
SEOUL, Sept. 4 (Yonhap) -- The leader of Samsung Electronics Co.'s largest labor union and a senior union official are under investigation on suspicion of stealing the personal information of about 100,000 company employees to create a "union blacklist," information obtained by Yonhap News Agency showed Friday.
The Hwaseong Dongtan Police Station referred Choi Seung-ho, head of the Samsung Electronics labor union, and the unidentified senior union official to the prosecution without detention on charges of violating the personal information protection law, according to the information.
Choi and the union official are accused of compiling a blacklist, using illegally obtained personal information of employees that included their union membership. They are believed to have made such a list in and around March, when the union was preparing to launch a general strike over performance-based bonuses.
The unidentified union official, who used to handle the company's internal systems, is suspected of unlawfully obtaining a file containing the names of more than 100,000 company employees and handing it over to the labor union.
On April 10, Samsung Electronics filed a police complaint against unspecified union officials, alleging that they had extracted and shared employee information that was not related to their duties.
The company then filed a complaint against the union official now in question on April 16, accusing him of illegally collecting the personal information of a large number of employees through the company's internal system and providing it to a third party.
The company alleged that the union official accessed the internal system approximately 20,000 times over about an hour to view employees' personal information.
The police spent nearly five months investigating various circumstances indicating Choi's involvement in creating a union blacklist before confirming the charges against the two.
On the other hand, the police also referred four other Samsung Electronics employees to prosecutors on the same day on charges of violating the personal information protection law by improperly accessing the company's internal system.
The four allegedly checked the union membership status of other employees out of curiosity but did not compile or distribute the information.
Open Questions
- What specific penalties do the accused face?
- How will this impact ongoing union negotiations?
