Getting symbol not defined with link time reference when trying to run yum or subscription-manager commands

Issue

• Getting error /lib64/libxml2.so.2: symbol gzopen64, version ZLIB_1.2.3.3 not defined in file libz.so.1 with link time reference when trying to run yum or subscription-manager commands.

# subscription-manager status
Unable to find Subscription Manager module.
Error: /lib64/libxml2.so.2: symbol gzopen64, version ZLIB_1.2.3.3 not defined in file libz.so.1 with link time reference

# yum repolist
There was a problem importing one of the Python modules
required to run yum. The error leading to this problem was:

   /lib64/libxml2.so.2: symbol gzopen64, version ZLIB_1.2.3.3 not defined in file libz.so.1 with link time reference

Please install a package which provides this module, or
verify that the module is installed correctly.

It's possible that the above module doesn't match the
current version of Python, which is:
2.7.5 (default, May  3 2017, 07:55:04) 
[GCC 4.8.5 20150623 (Red Hat 4.8.5-14)]

If you cannot solve this problem yourself, please go to 
the yum faq at:
  http://yum.baseurl.org/wiki/Faq