Observers say designating the union affiliate-level is Samsung¡¯s attempt to devalue and isolate the union

By Kim Jae-seob, Senior Staff Writer¡¡

Samsung is designating the new union as the ¡°Samsung Everland Union¡± so that any response comes from Samsung Everland. A Samsung official said, ¡°We decided that Samsung Everland should respond to it based on the internal determination that a response at the group level would mean getting caught up in labor sector tactics.¡±

Samsung is also predicted a strong likelihood that the establishment will amount to nothing more than a ¡°tempest in a teapot¡± owing to the limitations of an extra-company union.

Internally, however, some observers are expressing concerns about the possible repercussions. The concern is that employees who feel disgruntled with the company or threatened under the anti-corruption measures and project adjustments currently being pursued at the direction of Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Kun-hee could gravitate toward unions. Another factor is the difficulty of labor union monitoring at a time when Lee is preparing to hand over management rights to his children.

For this reason, Samsung has been at work for some time establishing response measures based on the determination that the permission of multiple trade unions would be a major factor in management from the second half of 2011. Although the establishment of labor unions cannot be prevented because they are legally permitted, the strategy to date has been to prevent the unions from obtaining cooperation. The idea has been to preemptively resolve areas where the union would be expected to play a leading role so that employees would not feel the need for a union.

As measures to achieve this, Samsung paid 200 thousand won ($189) each in vacation allowances to all affiliate company employees for the first time this year, with the stated goal of promoting the domestic demand economy, and recalibrated its performance-based pay calculation methods to reduce the perception of exclusion among employees.

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