[vol.11] Voices from the Field_ LG Industrial Electronic Co. is to root out sexual harassment in the company
WORKING WOMAN 2008. 3. 20. 11:20sung-min Ju (Chairperson, LG Industrial Electornic Co, labor union)
When you watch the LG's famous TV commercial, "I love you, LG." you would imagine that the LG values nice and wonderful things in everyday life. The viewers may believe that the company supports simple positive values of the society, including "a respect of its own women workers as workers, not as sex objects," in everyday life. For us women workers in LG industrial Electronic Company, "I love you, LG," is a phrase rather scaring.
The LG industrial Electronic Co., one of the important companies belongs to the LG group, is an elevator producing company with its six factories, employing more than 10,000 workers.
In this large company whose management ideology is a just management and a respect for human being, there are frequent occurrances of sxual harassment. When we define sexual harassment, as "any unwantd leers, comments, suggestions, or physical contact of a sexual nature, as welll as unwelcome requests for sexual favors," sexual harassment is a practice that regards every women as sex objests, not as equal human beings.
Examples of sexual harassment occurring on the LG's work floor are as follows:
-
When there is a telephone call for a women worker, a male worker yells at her, "XX you have big breasts," instead of telling her, "there is a call for you."
- When a woman worker who is trying hard to put a three-legged part into a box, a male section leader says, "hey, you have to turn off the lights to put it in easily. These women are so excited whenever they see three-legged things."
- When a new woman worker who is fresh off from high school was posted, the male section leader said to other male workers, pointing to the young woman, "That woman is main, just like my rice ready to eat, so no one should touch her." He also said to this woman, "You are supposed to wait me at XX hotel, after taking a bath carefully for me."
- To young women workers, the men say, "I don't like you who smell like babies, I like old ladies better"- They also say, "How about having a deep kiss, holding your waist, to a degree to pull out your front teeth," a terrible verbal abuse.
Besides using vulgar languages of sexual nature, the male workers molest women workers by spanking women workers' behinds: by touching women's back while they talk to women workers. Moreover, the men wake up women workers by holding and shaking their breast, if the women dose during their night work.
These offenders, who are usually section leaders, engage this kind of sexual violences over women workers. Since their wives and daughters might also be working somewhere, it would be just like offending their own wives and daughters.
Sexual harassment within the company is a serious problem by itself, but the gravity of the situation is hightened because the offenders engage in the same kind of conducts repeatedly, without showing any regrets. Moreover, the company that should properly deal with this kinds of conducts in order to prevent sexual harassment from occurring again, put pressures on the reference people of the victims, and call the parents of the victims who brought up her case into public.
The management, blaming the victims, questions their parents, "how would you have educated your daughter, so that she is so troublesome?" and so forth. In short, the company persistently has tried to patch up the cases, by appeasing the victims, by mobilizing their parents and their senior workers in the company.
Thus, the labor union requested to call a disciplinary committee to eradicate sexual harassment in the company. Four offenders were submitted to disciplinary punishments, ranging from a demotion to a lower grade to a forced resignation by the disciplinary committee. The committee, however, called another meeting right after and sharply lightened its punishments, ranging from a two month-suspension from office and to a demotion. The management is keen on appeasing, threatening and intimidating the victims.
Although one of the four offenders was notified that he is submitted to a disciplinary measure due to his obscene conduct, he is allowed to call women workers into his office under the excuse of a personal interview. This way, the management allowed him to continue his obscenity within the company, and he called a victim woman worker to his office and touched her thighs.
Since the company does not stop this practice of sexual harassments over women workers by not willing to penalize the offenders, the LG is very much deceiving the public throught its TV commercials everyday that the company is sustaining a just management and a respect for humanity.
Although the labor union demanded the company to resolve these cases properly, the company has dealt with the cases superficially without resolving. One of the victims, finally laid a formal complaint before the Chonnan city police.
The case was sent to the prosecutor's office. The presecutor's office, however, has tried hard to draw a mutual agreement from the offender and the victim, without punishing the offender and the company in order to prevent this kind of harassments from occurring again. Now, we wonder to whom we could turn for a help in order to resolve this case properly.
To have a safe and a non-threatening work environment for women, the union demands the company:
First, the respective factory manager must exhibit a public apology on a large bulletin board that can be read everyone in the company, regarding his grave faults in not resolving sexual harassment cases properly.
Second, the two section leaders (excluding the supervisor who was submitted to a forced resignation) is to be transferred from the section where women workers work.
Third, the company must prepare some measures immediately to root out sexual harassment in the future. Fourth, the company may not intimidate nor make a reprisal against the woman worker who laid a formal complaint. If the company engaged in this kind of conducts, the labor union would immediately take corresponding actions.