On Feb. 13, MBC reported the suspicion about Coupang’s blacklist. The blacklist included 16,450 people, not only workers who had applied for industrial accident insurance but also reporters for each broadcasting studio. The blacklist has a vast amount of names, phone numbers, birth dates, and brief reasons for listing. The list was based on the personal information collected only for employment.
According to the Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA), the company must destroy information about an employee leaving the company. In fact, according to a report by Newstapa (an independent media), the undercover reporter who exposed Coupang’s poor working conditions was listed for defamation of the company. Reporters had never allowed Coupang to use their personal information. After the public report, Coupang claimed they had deleted the blacklist, but there remain suspicions about the complete deletion. The reporters had been rejected for all jobs provided by Coupang.
Coupang argued that it is not illegal to create a blacklist for self-company management. However, the Labor Standards Act (LSA) prohibits employment inference, “No one should create, use, or communicate with secret symbols or lists to interfere with workers’ employment.” Coupang Fulfillment argues that using self-assessment data against its company does not constitute the LSA. Nevertheless, Coupang operates affiliated companies in various fields, such as Coupang Fulfillment, Coupang Pay, and Coupang Eats. If the blacklist was shared, it can be controversial how we set the boundary of one company.
Despite Coupang’s self-approval, it cannot be free from the suspicion of abuse. Article 18 Paragraph 1 of PIPA strictly regulates the use of personal information for another purpose of collection. However, daily workers have never been guided about the previous agreements to blacklisting. Experts expressed the opinion that even if they agreed to the inclusive content of the labor contract, it does not mean they noticed and agreed to the act of blacklisting. Now, several accusations are still in progress. Depending on how the case concludes, it may have a significant impact on how other companies handle employee’s personal information.
