(Seoul) Samsung Electronics workers will go on strike immediately, a union leader said Monday, as a dispute over wages and benefits intensifies at the tech giant.
“We will fight through a general strike until our demands are met; no pay, no work,” said Son Woo-mok, head of the national union of Samsung Electronics Union.
The move follows a one-day walkout on June 7, the first such collective action at the company that has been union-free for decades.
Management has been negotiating wages with the union since January, but the two sides had still not reached an agreement.
Son Woo-mok said Samsung Electronics’ latest offer to employees “has angered all members” of the union, which represents about 28,000 workers.
Management of the company, the world’s largest producer of memory cards, has been engaged in negotiations with the union since January.
The company offered employees a 5.1 percent pay rise this year before the June strike.
Rejecting the offer on the table, the union leader presented demands including improvements to annual leave and transparent performance bonuses.
“The management should be held responsible for all losses incurred by the strike,” Son Woo-mok said in a live broadcast on YouTube.
Samsung Electronics is one of the world’s largest smartphone manufacturers and one of the few producers of high-value memory cards used for generative artificial intelligence (AI).
“We have not yet received any official communication from the company, except that they have received our strike declaration,” Lee Hyun-kuk, vice president of the union, told AFP on Monday.
For nearly 50 years, Samsung Electronics has worked to prevent its employees from unionizing, sometimes with violent methods, critics say. 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.