Damage claims, sick workplaces, and bodies(Nov. 2022)

Min Choi, MD, Activist and occupational and environmental medicine specialist

Korea Institute of Labor Safety and Health

2023

 

This testament was left by Bae Dal-ho from Doosan Heavy Industries in 2003. In 2002, a union negotiator at Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction was detained for striking and released in September 2022. What awaited him out of jail was a lawsuit for damages from the company, the subsequent seizure of his property and wages, and disciplinary action. He returned to work on December 26, 2022 after a three-month suspension, but only received 25,000 won (approximately USD$20) in his paycheck. Out of despair over union repression, financial hardship due to the seizure of his property and wages, and anger at the company, he took his own life on January 9, 2003.

 

“The company seems to have decided to use this opportunity to wipe out the union and dry up the seeds of cooperative union members… In this country, a worker has to risk his life to live as a human being… Do all workers have to starve to death? The fault is theirs, and they are trying to turn us into unions and workers in a vegetative state by sending us to court to sue for damages, to be detained, and to be fired.”

 

On October 17, 2003, Kim Joo-ik, chairman of the Hanjin Heavy Industries union in Busan, also threw himself to his death. On June 11, 2003, he climbed a crane and began a high-altitude protest against the company’s repression, layoffs, and wage freezes which had been underway since 2002. The strike lasted 129 days, but the company avoided bargaining and used the damages garnishment to repress the strike. The company threatened the strikers with damages if they did not return to work by October 15th. The membership had dwindled to 200 members, and Kim Joo-ik, the branch president, wanted the strike to win, even if it meant taking his own life.

 

 

The history of wage garnishments and worker deaths

Holding labor unions liable for damages in South Korea has a much longer history. The first case is said to be a 1990 lawsuit for damages filed against the Dongsan Medical Center Labor Union by the Daegu Keimyung Christian University. The Daegu District Court found the union liable for damages for violating the Trade Union Dispute Mediation Act. After this ruling, there were a number of cases in which workers’ salaries or property were withheld by companies. In particular, the Minister of Labor at the time presented the ruling as a model case and issued guidelines to actively use civil damage claims at a gathering of labor inspectors across the country. The number of claims increased exponentially, and civil and criminal liability was recognized for the majority of labor unions and their members.

 

The use of damage claims against labor unions has been widely publicized since 2013. Millions and tens of millions of US dollars in damages and seizures have been have been handed down to the Ssangyong Motor Union, Railroad Union, Hanjin Heavy Industries Union, and Hyundai Motor’s non-regular workers’ union. Especially after the Ssangyong Motor strike in 2009, workers and citizens sympathized with the situation where workers and their families were suffering and killing themselves due to the company’s retaliatory damages and seizures. The organization ‘Sonjabgo’ (Hand in Hand) was created to solve this problem. The ‘Yellow Envelope Campaign’ began when a reader of a weekly news magazine, Sisain, read an article about Ssangyong Motor workers who were sentenced to pay 4.7 billion won in compensation to the company, and sent money to the news magazine along with a letter saying that this unimaginably large amount of money could be made if 100,000 people paid 47,000 KRW (about USD$35). The interest exploded when famous singer, Lee Hyo-ri, donated 47,000 KRW, and the issue of withholding damages rose to the top of the social agenda. Since then, efforts to propose the ‘Yellow Envelope Law’, also known as the ‘Trade Union and Labor Relations Adjustment Act Amendment Bill’, which is the legal basis for withholding damages, have been in full swing, but there has been no progress so far.

 

Originally, claims for compensation for damages and claims for provisional seizure were not specific to labor cases, but rather to civil law in general. According to the Civil Code, “a person who causes damage to another by intentional or negligent misconduct is liable to compensate for the damage.” However, they have become a weapon to destroy workers’ lives and health by being used by employers as a means of retaliation after workers protest and strike.

 

Damage claims tear at workers’ bodies and minds

According to a survey of workers forced to pay damage claims to companies conducted by ‘Sonjabgo’ from July to December 2018, the prevalence of musculoskeletal pain (back, upper, and lower extremity) in the past year was over 60% for both women and men who experienced damage claims due to labor disputes. In addition, the prevalence of health problems such as generalized fatigue and hearing problems in the past year was statistically significantly higher among workers who experience damage claims compared to the general population. For men, the risk was from 3.4 times (generalized fatigue) to 9 times higher (musculoskeletal lower extremity pain), with a prevalence ratio of over 30 for self-rated health. Among women, prevalence rates were from four times (musculoskeletal upper extremity pain) to 8.2 times higher (musculoskeletal lower extremity pain). Self-rated health also showed prevalence ratios over 20.

 

The mental health consequences are even more dreadful. Compared to the general population of workers in the same industry and age group, male workers who had experienced wage garnishment due to labor disputes had 11.9 times the prevalence of depression in the past week and 21.9 times the prevalence of suicidal thoughts in the past year. Female workers who had experienced damage claims were also 8.6 times more likely to report depression in the past week and 22 times more likely to report suicidal thoughts in the past year.

The researchers also recently published in-depth interviews with 12 workers. The researchers found that these workers were traumatized by the violence that occurred in the course of the strike and the pressure of claiming damages, but did not receive adequate treatment, which led to their health conditions continuing to deteriorate in the years that followed. As the title of the paper analyzing the survey says, “money that can’t be repaid” has returned to haunt them with a “sick body and mind.” And it has a profound effect over a very long period of time.

 

Gagging safety issues with garnishments

In some cases, work stoppages directly related to safety issues have resulted in damage claims. In June 2022, a company claimed 90 million won (approximately USD$70,000) in damages against a worker and his union at a Hankook Tire plant who shut down a machine after determining that the machine’s safeguards were not functioning properly. The machine the worker had shut down had been involved in a fatal accident in 2020. Any worker who feels something is wrong with the equipment that caused a major accident should be able to stop the machine and request a safety inspection. However, a few days later, the company sued the union’s branch president and others for business interference and claimed damages, saying that it had lost 300 million won (approximately USD$230,000) due to the union’s shut down of the equipment.

 

There is a long history of using damages to silence workers who raise safety concerns. In 2014, Hong Jin-sung, the current head of the Kia Motors branch of the Korean Metalworkers’ Union, was sued by the company for obstruction of business. The company demanded 110 million won (approximately USD$84,000) in damages while he was a delegate of union. A muffler weighing 10 kilograms that had been assembled and was being transported to the next line fell beside a worker. Hong Jin-sung stopped the work and demanded that the factory conduct a safety inspection. “There were no injuries, so it’s not a safety accident,” the company said. However, the workers argued, “We can’t resume work before the safety inspection.” Later that afternoon, after a safety inspection meeting between labor and management representatives, work resumed. A few weeks later, however, the company sued Hong for obstruction of business, claiming that the 516-minute work stoppage cost the company 480 million won (approximately USD$370,000) in fixed costs alone, and filed a lawsuit for 110 million won (approximately USD$84,000) in damages. The case was concluded two years later with the worker’s acquittal, but in the meantime, the worker and his family suffered, and the workers realized that stopping work over safety concerns can result in retaliation from the company.

 

The company’s attitude of responding to not only labor disputes but also safety concerns with damage claims is a calculated ploy to undermine workers. The ‘gravity’ of astronomical sums of money, as testified to by claimants, crushes workers, silences them, and makes them weak. In the process, the workplace becomes dangerous and workers’ bodies and minds are injured. The ‘Yellow Envelope Law’ is needed now, for the sake of workers’ health.