Samsung Electronics pledges to compensate sick workers by 2028

SEOUL (Reuters) – Samsung Electronics (South Korea)005930.KS) has pledged Friday to compensate by 2028 its workers in the local flea and display manufacturing plant suffering from work – related illnesses.

This decision resolves a year-long conflict between the world's largest memory chip maker and a defense group representing sick workers and their families after the death in 2007 of a worker at a Samsung chip factory suffering from leukemia.

"Our efforts have been insufficient to better understand the pain felt by the affected workers and their families," said Samsung Electronics general manager Kim Ki-nam, at a public apology organized during the signing of the Agreement with the advocacy group.

Following the mediation committee's decision on this case earlier this month, Samsung will pay up to 150 million won ($ 132,649.45) for each former and current employee suffering from work-related illnesses if they have been shown to have been exposed to harmful chemicals.

All former and current Samsung employees, as well as company subcontractors who have been working in Samsung's semiconductor and screen production facilities for more than a year since 1984, are eligible for sickness compensation.

Kim said the company would issue its compensation guidelines as well as a letter of apology by the end of the month on the company's website and that a law firm Seoul-based independent will lead the review process of the affected workers to determine their eligibility for compensation.

The South Korean activist group Sharps claims that about 200 workers became ill after working in the Samsung factories and that 70 of them died later.

Hwang Sang-ki, founder of Sharps and father of a worker in a dead flea manufacturing plant with leukemia, told Reuters that, besides these 200 employees, he expected more Workers are demanding compensation, but it would take a long medical process to prove that their illnesses were directly related to the work environment.

Samsung and Sharps have not specified the potential size of total compensation.