Thousands of Samsung workers go on three-day strike

Thousands of union members at Samsung Electronics Co. (-0.34 percent decline) in South Korea walked out of their jobs on Monday as part of a three-day strike to demand higher wages and better working conditions, union leaders said.

Samsung, the world’s largest maker of memory chips and smartphones, said there were no immediate production disruptions.

The National Samsung Electronics Union, the company’s own union with around 30,000 members – almost a quarter of the company’s workforce – announced that around 6,500 workers across the country went on strike on Monday.

Union members have been asked to stop work for three days until Wednesday, increasing pressure on management to meet their demands for higher wages, bigger bonuses and better working conditions in the currently stalled wage negotiations.

“Our strike today is aimed at disrupting production,” a union leader said during a televised rally of striking workers near a Samsung plant in Hwaseong, south of Seoul, warning that a larger-scale general strike could break out later this month if management does not meet their demands.

In June, the union launched the first walkout at Samsung, calling on its members to collectively take a day of paid leave. However, the previous union action had no impact on operations at the company’s highly automated chip production facilities.

The unrest at Samsung followed Friday’s upbeat second-quarter profit forecast, boosted by a continued recovery in its chip business. The company expects operating profit for the April-June period to rise nearly 16-fold from the same period last year.

Share prices rose 0.5% as traders largely ignored the unions’ actions.

Write to Kwanwoo Jun at [email protected]