Samsung Electronics workers to strike July 8-10: union official By Reuters

By Heekyong Yang and Joyce Lee

SEOUL (Reuters) – A union at Samsung Electronics (KS:) in South Korea has called for a strike from July 8 to 10, a union official said on Tuesday, stepping up its industrial action against the country’s most valuable company.

The union is currently determining how many workers will join the strike, the official told Reuters by phone.

Union leader Son Woo-mok said late Monday that the union wanted a more transparent system for bonuses and time off in lieu and wanted the company to treat them as equal partners.

Samsung declined to comment on the union’s strike plan.

The share price was unaffected, rising 0.1% in morning trading, while the benchmark price index fell 0.7%.

Union membership increased rapidly after Samsung pledged in 2020 to stop hindering union growth.

The strike itself is unlikely to have a major impact on chip production, as production at the world’s largest memory chip maker is largely automated, two analysts told Reuters.

But what impact this will have ultimately depends on how many chip factory operators participate and for how long, says Kim Yang-Paeng, senior researcher at the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade.

“Chip production cannot continue with replacement workers” if the people operating the automated machines go on strike for an extended period of time, “due to the specificity and expertise of this work,” Kim said.

Last month, workers took their annual leave en masse on the same day, in what was effectively the union’s first industrial action. At the time, Samsung said there had been no impact on production or business operations. The strikers were mainly employed in inner-city offices, not at production plants, according to analysts.

“This planned strike marks a turning point in the history of Samsung’s non-union management. This could be seen as a decline in employee loyalty at Samsung … caused by disappointing wages and compensation compared to Samsung’s competitors,” a Seoul-based analyst said on Tuesday. He asked not to be named because details of the strike were not known.