The National Samsung Electronics Union (NSEU) in South Korea has announced plans for a general strike starting July 8, in a bid to secure better pay and time off for its members.
This follows a one-day walkout held last month by the union, which demands a one-day vacation for all employees and fair compensation for members who did not sign the 2024 salary negotiation agreement.
NSEU, representing approximately 28,000 members — over a fifth of Samsung Electronics’ workforce —is calling for improvements to the company’s performance-based bonus system and an additional day of annual leave.
“We are declaring a general strike today,” said Son Woo-mok, president of NSEU, during a live YouTube broadcast. “Until our demands are met, we will fight with the ‘no pay no work’ general strike.”
The union has stated it will provide further details on the strike on Tuesday. Samsung Electronics has not yet commented on the announcement.
Last month’s walkout, conducted by using annual leave, marked the union’s first industrial action, though Samsung reported no impact on production or business activity. However, a larger or prolonged strike could pose significant challenges for Samsung as it competes to catch up with rivals in the high bandwidth memory (HBM) chip market, which is critical for AI applications.
Union membership at Samsung has grown rapidly since 2020, when the company committed to ending its practice of discouraging organized labor.
A TrendForce report last month said Samsung’s global share of DRAM and NAND Flash output in 2023 was 46.8 percent and 32.4 percent, respectively.
Though the South Korean plants account for all 46.8 percent of global DRAM production and about 17.8 percent of global NAND Flash production, TrendForce identified reasons why the strike in June did not impact production. The strike in June involved employees at Samsung’s headquarters in Seocho, Seoul, where union participation in higher, but these employees do not directly engage in production.