‘삼성 백혈병 분쟁’을 재론함 : 국제인권규범에 따른 비평과 후속과제의 제안

The so-called ‘‘Samsung Leukemia Disputes’ had lasted more than 10 years since the death of a former worker in 2007 due to leukemia which was allegedly contracted at the workplace of Samsung Electronics. The disputes were brought to an end by an arbitral award, which was welcomed not just by the disputing parties themselves but also other stakeholders and media. This paper revists the disputes, with suspicion that the contents of the arbitral award had something missing. The first half of this paper is dedicated to the description of points at issue and the negotiation processes ultimately leading to the arbitral award, revealing the dilemmas of disputants and the defects in the final solution. It regrettably shows that the arbitral solution failed to show what was wrong with Samsung Electronics and what should be done to prevent similar incidents in the future. Admitting that our inability to verify the causality between the diseases and the working conditions at Samsung Electronics lay at the background of the arbitral decision, still the proposed solution left a lot unsatisfactory. In search of a better alternative, this article invokes international human rights norms, especially the Principles on Human Rights and the Protection of Workers from Exposure to Toxic Substances (hereinafter the TSPs) adpoted by the UN Human Rights Council in 2019. The TSPs may not be deemed to be an international human rights ‘law’ in itself, but they can be said to be the most recent and the most authoritative interpretation on the current international human rights law on the issue of occupational toxic exposure. The TSPs view workplace exposure to toxic substances as a form of human rights abuses and propose 15 principles to be applied in addressing the issue accordingly. The idea of the TSPs strongly reflects the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), underlining state duty to protect, corporate responsibility to respect and victim’s access to remedy as well as the importance of workers’ right to information and collective labor rights in preventing occupational exposure to toxic substances. The implication of the TSPs to the Samsung Leukemia Disputes is clear: Samsung Electronics needs changing. The TSPs urge Samsung Electronics to recognize the workers’ human rights to safe and healthy working conditions, to adopt and exercise due diligence to prevent and remedy human rights abuses arising from toxic exposure at workplaces and to effectively secures workers’ right to information and collective labor right. The TSPs also emphasize the role of state and workers in helping or pressing Samsung Electronics to exercise due diligence. To sum up, the TSPs clearly reveal the limitations of the arbitral decision over the disputes and provide much more persuasive alternative. This alternative deserves our special attention not only because it will prevent the recurrence of similar incidents at the workplaces of Samsung Electronics but because it will also help reduce occupational toxic exposure all over the world where Samsung Electronics has business relations in one way or others.