By Anju Grover/2019-07-03

The Smartphone giant, For Samsung  Electronics’s French subsidiary has been accused of illegal practices in its factories like the use of underage labour and human rights violations, by two French activist groups, Sherpa and ActionAid France-Peuples Solidaires.

“After an epic judicial procedure initiated by Sherpa and ActionAid France more than 6 years ago, SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS France SAS has been indicted on misleading advertising on April 17, 2019 by an investigating judge at the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris”, stated Sherpa activist group in a statement on Wednesday.  “It was a historic step in the fight against corporate impunity”, it further stated. The indictment of SAMSUNG France, which comes only ten months after Lafarge’s indictment for its activities in Syria, is a new landmark step in the fight against multinationals impunity.

This indictment comes after a new complaint was filed by Sherpa and ActionAid France on June 25, 2018 against SAMSUNG France and the parent company in Korea. SAMSUNG proclaims to be “one of the most ethical companies in the world“, it must therefore report on its commitments to the courts.

SAMSUNG displays ethical commitments on workers’ rights that it does not respect in its factories in China, Korea and Vietnam. In fact, many NGOs denounce fundamental rights’ violations in serious investigations reports: employment of children under the age of sixteen years old; abusive working hours; working conditions and accommodation incompatible with human dignity and endangering workers life.

For the first time in France, an investigating magistrate recognized that ethical commitments made by a company are likely to constitute commercial practices that engage, as such, their issuer, the statement further added.

The SAMSUNG group has reached 219 billion US dollars in turnover in 2018, and SAMSUNG France more than 3 billion US dollars in 2017, while factory workers in Asia are mostly paid less than 200 euros per month, sometimes to assemble around 1600 phones a day. “Companies that benefit from their proclaimed virtuous image must no longer be able to violate their own commitments without facing legal consequences. It is now urgent to regulate globally the activities of multinational by ensuring the adoption of the International Treaty, and to put in application the historic law on the duty of vigilance adopted in France in 2017” according to Sandra Cossart, director at Sherpa.

For Chloe Stevenson, ActionAid France campaigner said , ” workers are often the first victims of human rights violations related to multinationals activities like SAMSUNG. Making this type of ethical commitment binding would also be a way to prevent the reproduction of such abuses. ”