(Seoul) Workers at South Korean tech giant Samsung began an unprecedented three-day general strike Monday, the head of a union representing tens of thousands of employees said after wage negotiations broke down.
“The strike started today,” Son Woo-mok, head of the national union at Samsung Electronics, told AFP, adding that a large rally was planned for later in the day.
The union, which has about 28,000 members, more than a fifth of the company’s total workforce, announced a three-day strike last week, saying it was a last resort after negotiations broke down.
The move follows a one-day walkout in June, the first such action at the company that had been union-free for decades.
Management at the company, the world’s largest producer of memory chips, has been in wage negotiations with the union since January, but the two sides have failed to reach an agreement.
“We are now at a crossroads,” the union said in an appeal to workers last week, urging them to support a “critical” strike.
“This strike is the last card we can use,” the union said, adding that the company’s employees must “act in unity.”
“This strike is not only about improving working conditions, but also about recovering our rights that have been ignored until now,” the union added.
Workers have rejected an offer of a 5.1% pay rise, while the union is also demanding improved annual leave and transparency on performance-based bonuses.
Samsung management declined to comment when contacted by AFP.
Unionization long prevented
For nearly 50 years, the company has prevented its employees from unionizing, sometimes using violent methods, according to its detractors.
The company’s founder, Lee Byung-chul, who died in 1987, was adamantly opposed to unions, saying he would never allow them “until I have dust in my eyes.”
Samsung Electronics’ first union was formed in the late 2010s.
Samsung is one of the world’s largest smartphone manufacturers and one of the few producers of high-value memory cards used for artificial intelligence (AI).
It is the flagship subsidiary of Samsung Group, the largest of the family-owned conglomerates that dominate Asia’s fourth-largest economy.
Samsung Electronics said last week it expects second-quarter operating profit to rise 15-fold from a year earlier on a rebound in chip prices and rising demand for its artificial intelligence products.
Semiconductors are at the heart of today’s global economy, used in everything from household appliances to cell phones to cars to weapons.
These chips are South Korea’s top export, earning the country $11.7 billion in March, the highest in nearly two years. That’s one-fifth of the country’s total exports.