ED Leukemia case

Samsung should do more to ensure occupational safety

Samsung Electronics and its workers and their families will soon end their long-drawn-out dispute over fatal occupational diseases as both sides decided to accept a third-party arbitration proposal unconditionally. The proposal is expected to come before October.

We welcome the decision, although it comes belatedly. We hope it will solve the conflict which has persisted for 11 years over the world's largest chipmaker's unsafe working conditions. Several hundreds of its employees were found to have contracted leukemia and other intractable diseases.

The dispute came to the fore in 2007 when a former Samsung semiconductor worker, Hwang Yu-mi, died of leukemia at 22. Since then, the bereaved families of Hwang and other victims had waged a long legal battle to prove the link between their deaths and a harmful working environment.

In 2009, the Korea Workers' Compensation & Welfare Service turned down a compensation request by the family members of Hwang and four other victims. The families filed a suit with the Seoul Administrative Court and won in 2011. The Seoul High Court upheld the ruling in favor of the victims in 2014. So far 29 of 95 deceased Samsung workers have been recognized officially as victims of occupational illnesses.

The mediation committee, led by former justice Kim Ji-hyung, was formed in 2014. It made its first arbitration proposal in 2015. But the two sides failed to accept it. Samsung got most of the blame because it refused to accept a proposal for a nonprofit foundation with a funding of around 100 billion won ($88.3 million) to provide welfare programs for the victims and their family members.

However, Samsung has been reluctant to acknowledge its responsibility for causing its employees to suffer from incurable occupational diseases, including leukemia, breast cancer, lung cancer, brain tumors and multiple sclerosis. It has even refused to follow a court order to reveal its test results of working conditions for chip-making employees.

In this context, Samsung's unconditional acceptance of the arbitration proposal is seen as a stark contrast to the company's hard-line stance against a negotiated solution. Industry sources cautiously said Samsung has just begun to change its position in order to restore public trust before the Supreme Court starts a hearing about the company's Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong over his alleged involvement in a massive corruption scandal surrounding impeached President Park Geun-hye.

Of course, Samsung denied any link between the occupational disease dispute and Lee's trial. But the firm needs to create favorable public opinion about its corporate image. What Samsung should do now is admit its responsibility and make a sincere apology to the victims and their families. Then it must offer them sufficient compensation. The company also ought to make all-out efforts to prevent such illnesses from occurring again.