Union leader: Samsung workers in South Korea begin strike

Workers at South Korean technology giant Samsung began a three-day general strike on Monday after talks with management failed, the head of a union representing tens of thousands of employees told AFP.

“The strike started today,” Son Woo-mok, chairman of the National Samsung Electronics Union, told AFP, adding that a large rally was planned for later in the day.

The union, which has around 28,000 members, more than a fifth of the company’s total workforce, announced the three-day general strike last week, saying it was the last resort after the talks failed.

The move followed a one-day strike in June, the first collective action of its kind at the company, which had not organized a union for decades.

Management at the world’s largest memory chip manufacturer has been negotiating with the union over wages and benefits since January, but the two sides have failed to resolve their differences.

“We are now at a critical crossroads,” the union said in an appeal sent to its members last week, urging them to support the “critical” strike.

“This strike is the last card we can play,” the union said, demanding that the company’s employees “act in unison.”

“This strike is not just about improving working conditions, it is about reclaiming our rights that have been ignored so far,” it continued.

Workers rejected the offer of a 5.1 percent pay rise after the union had previously made demands such as improved annual leave and transparent, performance-related bonuses.

Samsung declined a request for comment.

– Unions avoided –
Samsung Electronics prevented its employees from unionizing for nearly 50 years—sometimes resorting to brutal methods, critics say—and yet rose to become the world’s largest smartphone and semiconductor manufacturer.

The company’s founder, Lee Byung-chul, who died in 1987, was a staunch opponent of unions and declared that he would never allow them “until I see dirt in front of my eyes”.

The first union at Samsung Electronics was founded in the late 2010s.

The company is the flagship subsidiary of South Korean giant Samsung Group, by far the largest of the family-run conglomerates that dominate business in Asia’s fourth-largest economy.

The company is the world’s largest manufacturer of memory chips and contributes a significant share to the global production of high-end chips.

Samsung recently forecast its second-quarter operating profit to increase 15-fold year-on-year due to rising demand for generative AI.

Semiconductors are the lifeblood of the global economy and are used in everything from kitchen appliances and mobile phones to cars and weapons.

And demand for the advanced chips that power AI systems has skyrocketed thanks to the success of ChatGPT and other generative AI products.

Semiconductors are South Korea’s top export, reaching $11.7 billion in March, the highest in nearly two years. They account for one-fifth of South Korea’s total exports, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

France-Presse