Samsung workers extend strike – Taipei Times

CONFIDENT:
The union said it had engaged in unspecified disruptions to production lines to pressure management into negotiations, adding it was confident it would reach a deal.

Union members at Samsung Electronics Co. called an indefinite strike yesterday to pressure South Korea’s largest company to meet their demands for higher wages and other benefits.

“Thousands of members of the National Samsung Electronics Union began a temporary, three-day strike on Monday. However, yesterday the union announced an indefinite strike, citing management’s unwillingness to negotiate.”

Samsung Electronics says there have been no production interruptions.

“Samsung Electronics will ensure that there are no disruptions on the production lines,” Samsung said in a statement. “The company remains committed to negotiating with the union in good faith.”

However, in a statement on its website, the union said it had engaged in unspecified disruptions to the company’s production lines in an effort to ultimately bring management to the negotiating table if the strikes continued.

The union wants to first target a smaller 8-inch production facility that relies more on human labor before targeting high-bandwidth memory (HBM) production in Pyeongtaek.

“We are confident of our victory,” the union said in a statement.

It was not announced how many members would join the extended strike.

The union had previously stated that 6,540 of its members had announced their participation in the previously planned three-day strike.

This would be only a fraction of Samsung Electronics’ total workforce, which is estimated at around 267,860 employees worldwide. Around 120,000 of them work in South Korea.

Earlier this year, union members and management held talks over the union’s demands for higher wages and better working conditions, but failed to reach an agreement. Last month, some union members used their annual leave together to stage a one-day strike, which observers said was the first labor strike at Samsung.

According to reports, around 30,000 Samsung employees are members of the National Samsung Electronics Union, the company’s largest union, but some also belong to other, smaller unions.

Investors are largely unimpressed, analysts said.

The market is focused on how quickly Samsung gets approval from Nvidia Corp to supply HBM and has “little interest in the strike,” said Lee Seung-woo, head of research at Eugene Investment & Securities Co.

In addition, it is difficult to estimate what impact this would have on earnings, as a possible production disruption could drive up chip prices, he said.

Additional reporting from Bloomberg