(Seoul) Union leaders at Samsung Electronics gathered Thursday outside the home of CEO Lee Jae-yong, accusing him of trying to break an unprecedented strike that began on July 8 by some of the South Korean giant’s workers.
About 15 officials from the Samsung Electronics National Union demonstrated outside the house, located in the upscale Hannam district, shouting: “Shhh! What is a union? What is a strike at Samsung?”
Their action, organised after the failure of a three-day negotiation session with management on Wednesday, was interrupted by the police.
The union, which claims some 36,000 members, or nearly a quarter of the group’s workforce, launched a three-day walkout on July 8, later transformed into an unlimited strike, due to a dispute over pay.
The move follows a one-day walkout in June, the first-ever strike in the history of the company, one of the world’s largest smartphone makers and one of the few producers of high-value memory used for generative artificial intelligence.
PHOTO ANTHONY WALLACE, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
The union accused Samsung’s CEO of using illegal means, including “blacklisting” workers, to try to break the strike.
The extent of the strike remains a mystery, and Samsung, which reported record second-quarter profits on Wednesday, has said it is not disrupting production. “If there is a delay in semiconductor production, the effects will not be immediate. It will take weeks or months,” union vice president Lee Hyun-kuk told AFP.
“In the 25 days since the strike began, all Lee has done is attend the wedding of the son of Asia’s richest man and gift Samsung phones to Olympic athletes worth more than 30 billion won” (about 29 billion Canadian dollars), he said.
The union leader was referring to the lavish wedding of Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s son Anant in July in Mumbai. The union accused the Samsung CEO of using illegal means, including “blacklisting” of strike participants, to try to break the strike.
“We will make all this public,” the union’s president, Son Woo-mok, told AFP. “Repression of unionism, unfair practices, industrial accidents, the list goes on.”