In May 2024, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre invited South Korean company Coway to respond to allegations of labour rights abuse at the company's USA subsidiary in California. California Restaurant and Retail Workers Union (CRRWU) has published a series of letters to investors (as seen on their Coway Watch website) detailing a list of alleged violations reported by Coway USA workers. In the past six months, these include, but are not limited to, the following:

• A continued refusal to recognise workers’ legal right to form a union while engaging in union-busting tactics, including that the company challenges the veracity of workers’ signatures and votes to delay unionisation, and intimidation and “retaliation” from the company against workers who have voted, despite a ruling in February 2024 from the National Labor Relations Board that most of the company’s challenges to ballots were “bogus”;
• That “economically exploitative and dehumanizing conditions are driving workers to leave the company in droves” as workers cite low-pay with no wage increases meaning they cannot sustain livelihoods; and
• When workers in early 2024 were not paid owing to a security scam, Coway “dismissed” the problem and did not pay workers for over a month until workers demanded what they owed with the support of the union organising committee.

Below, we have linked the newsletters published in February, March and April. The full list of newsletters published so far can be read on the Coway Watch website here. The Resource Centre did not receive a response from Coway.