Samsung Group flags fly in front of the company’s Seocho building in Seoul.
Sopa Images | Light Rocket | Getty Images
South Korea’s Samsung Electronics union will escalate strike action next week, launching its first strike over demands for a wage increase, union officials said on Wednesday.
The Samsung Electronics Union (NSEU), which has about 28,000 members and accounts for more than a fifth of the company’s workforce, said it would stop work for one day on June 7 as part of broader protest measures.
Union officials announced the news at a live news conference, holding a banner that read: “We can no longer tolerate labor repression, union repression.”
If union members go on leave en masse next week, it would mark the first strike by South Korean workers at the world’s top memory chip maker.
Workers have taken part in off-and-on protests in recent weeks outside the company’s offices in the capital, Seoul, and outside its chip production base in Hwaseong, south of Seoul.
In response to the company’s decision to raise wages by 5.1% this year, the union has previously stated that it hopes to add one day of annual leave and transparent performance bonuses.
On Wednesday, unions accused the tech giant of failing to come up with a compromise plan during talks the previous day.
“We will discuss it with the union in good faith,” Samsung Electronics said in a statement on Wednesday.
Union officials have defended the decision to take strike action amid poor performance at some Samsung operations.
“The company has been saying for the past 10 years that they have been facing a crisis,” NSEU President Son Woo-mok told reporters, but added that the company should not use this as an excuse not to meet its demands.
The union said all company sites across South Korea will be affected by the June 7 action. NSEU is the largest of five unions at South Korea’s tech giants. It was unclear whether other smaller unions planned to join the effort.
In response to Wednesday’s proposed strike, five union alliances at Samsung affiliates, including another Samsung Electronics union, questioned the intentions behind the strike plan and said they would not join the action.
The alliance said in a statement that this appeared to be an effort to join a militant umbrella union rather than improve conditions for workers at tech companies.
The strike announcement comes as Samsung, one of the world’s largest chipmakers and smartphone makers, appears to be faltering in some areas, including cutting-edge semiconductor chips.
Samsung last week replaced the head of its semiconductor unit, saying a new executive was needed to deal with what it called a “crisis” affecting the chip industry.
Last week, more than 2,000 unionized workers at the South Korean tech giant gathered in Seoul for a rare rally to demand higher wages.
Samsung Electronics has seen a rapid increase in union membership after it pledged in 2020 to end its practices that hinder the growth of organized labor.
Analysts said the increase in union membership reflected workers’ frustration with Samsung’s recent decline in competitiveness in businesses such as high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips and legal issues facing the technology giant.
In one case, the company is fighting a prosecutorial appeal against a ruling that found Samsung Electronics Chairman Jay Y. Lee not guilty of fraud and other charges related to the 2015 Samsung merger.
Samsung Electronics shares closed down 3.1% on Wednesday, while the benchmark KOSPI fell 1.7%.
About The Author
