(Gothenburg, Sweden): UN human rights experts have raised concerns about human rights violations at Samsung Vietnam (20 March 2018) in a joint statement. The three UN human rights experts, Mr. Baskut Tuncak, Ms. Anita Ramasastry, and Mr. David Kaye, expressed concern that Samsung’s intimidation and legal threats against workers and researchers who conducted a study into the lives of women workers constitute a breach of human rights.
Brussels, 21 March 2018 (ITUC OnLine): The International Trade Union Confederation has put threats against factory workers and labour activists in Samsung’s Vietnamese factories on top of the agenda for President Moon Jae-in during his visit to the country.
Electronics corporations converge at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week where they roll out latest tech innovations.
Health and environmental advocates are holding a counter event called the Mobile Social Congress to make visible the social, health, and environmental impacts in the design, raw material mining, production, use and waste of electronics. Recent research from IPEN Partners, the Research Center for Gender, Family and Environment in Development (CGFED), exposed health and labor violations of women workers at Samsung Vietnam mobile phone factories. IPEN made a presentation for Mobile Social Congress laying out the concerning findings, Samsung’s efforts to suppress the study, and why the safe and healthy working conditions in the electronics industry should concern us all.
"We are writing to respond to Samsung's criticisms of our recent study on working conditions at the company's mobile phone factories in Vietnam... In Vietnam and abroad, Samsung has been actively attempting to suppress and discredit this study that documents a number of concerning health and safety violations... However, none of Samsung's efforts can erase the evidence that Samsung has violated Vietnamese labour law and failed to honour its business obligations on human rights...
Our study and the company's reaction to it revealed several findings that are inconsistent with Samsung's obligations under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights including complying with national laws, providing a safe and healthy working environment, protecting the family unit, right to form independent trade unions, and freedom of expression...
Leading advocates from human rights, labor rights, women’s rights, public health, environmental justice, and sustainable purchasing organizations from around the world are
calling
on Samsung to protect the thousands of workers - most of them women of child-bearing age - who are making their mobile phones at factories in Vietnam. A
report
from the Hanoi-based, gender equity NGO
Research Center for Gender, Family and Environment in Development
(CGFED) and IPEN identified numerous health and labor violations from interviews with 45 women who work at two of Samsung’s factories in Vietnam. Please sign and invite your network to join the signature campaign on
Change.org
.
BBC covered the release of the CGFED/IPEN report on 15 December, in which the news outlet highlighted report findings, including workers' experiences of extreme fatigue, fainting and dizziness at work, and many accounts of miscarriage. In response, deputy general manager of Samsung Electronics Vietnam, Bang Hyun Woo said,"This report does not have a scientific basis." He also said much of the content in the report was "false" and "arbitrary."
IPEN requests Samsung "transparently publishes a complete list of chemicals used at the manufacturing facilities and describes the control."
