4 ms·

Imprisoned? Not just a fine for the company and settlement requiring them to promise to follow the law gong forward, without admitting wrongdoing? Inconceivable

• vkou 7y ago
  Well, the allegations, as presented in the article sound pretty bad, and are a few steps beyond the typical workplace retaliation that you would expect for trying to form a union. In Silicon Valley, you'll typically get put on a PIP, get your reputation smeared, mysteriously discover that your performance reviews have tanked, or get investigated and fired for violations of a deliberately vague, ill-defined policy that everyone else is breaking all the time. But you're probably not going to get your family spied on, or blackmailed.
  • jacquesm 7y ago
    Any such retaliation should be dealt with harshly. After all it is a fundamental right of workers to collectively bargain and eroding that right is a pretty big crime.
    • vkou 7y ago
      It should, but it isn't. At best, it gets hush-hushed with quiet after-the-fact no-admission-of-guilt settlements protected by NDAs. At worst, you lose your retaliation lawsuit, and have blackballed yourself from the industry. There's a reason employers do background checks on new hires. The Samsung stuff here, though, is truly beyond the pale, because it extends outside the workplace, and is well-documented. (As opposed to he-said-she-said subjective things like performance reviews...)
• hammock 7y ago
  Not only that, they denied Lee the chain-of-command, plausible deniability shielding that top level leaders usually get: "While Lee claims there were many areas he did not know much about, [we] cannot give him immunity only due to the fact that [he] was not aware of the peripheral areas," the judge in the case said.