Samsung chairman indicted for alleged union sabotage

Samsung.
(Image credit: iStock)

South Korea's biggest company is in trouble once again.

Samsung Electronics' board chairman has been indicted in South Korea on charges of sabotaging a labor union, Bloomberg reports. Lee Sang-hoon and 27 employees are alleged to have busted a union within the company in 2013, back when Lee was the tech giant's CFO.

South Korean prosecutors say Samsung has repeatedly disrupted labor unions, ensuring only 300 of its 200,000 South Korean employees are organized, per The Verge. These newest charges allege executives threatened to slashed unionized employees' paychecks and cut off subcontractors who back unions. It all amounted to "an organized crime that mobilized the whole company to its full capacity," prosecutors say.

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The company's executives have repeatedly run into legal trouble, with Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong convicted in 2017 on corruption charges linked to the disgraced former South Korean President Park Geun-hye. Lee Jae-yong, the grandson of Samsung's founder, spent a year in jail before being released earlier this year. Samsung declined to comment to Bloomberg.

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.